The Inconspicuous Beginnings of an Insanely Brilliant Masterpiece, August 4, 2010
By shaxper (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cerebus, Volume 1 (Paperback)
Reading Cerebus volume 1 is a lot like staring down a long, winding road, wondering where the heck it's going and, more importantly, whether or not the long trip (300 issues, nearly 30 years worth of stories) is worth taking. The series takes so many twists, turns, and abrupt departures throughout its run that it's never safe to judge the full scope of the journey until its end. Having now read all 300 issues and taken a full year to process the work as a whole, I finally feel prepared to endorse the series and, by extension, the first volume as an entryway into this lengthy and important work.

Cerebus began as a simple parody of a number of barbarian comics from the 1970s starring a grumpy aardvark barbarian. However, a slow evolution began partway into the first volume and never really stopped. Gradually, and over the course of many volumes, the series became the most experimental, artistic, philosophical, and overall intelligent comic I've ever read or even heard about. It continually broke new ground in the comic genre in ways that still haven't been duplicated nor surpassed. You won't see much of this in volume one, but continuity is very important in Cerebus' world, and all the events and characters contained in this seemingly unimpressive volume will come back in more significant ways later down the road.

Unfortunately, the downside to the series is that creator Dave Sim is utterly wacko. As a result, the series isnt really coherant. It maintains a careful continuity, but characterization, themes, tone, and scope spotaneously change with a moment's notice many times throughout the series. Sim will even take spontaneous detours, in the worst case spending an entire volume depicting the death of Oscar Wilde for seemingly no reason. But most dramatically of all, he turns into a strongly outspoken mysogenist late in the series, spending a great deal of time talking about the evils of women and feminism, and ultimately decides that he is a prophet, reinterpreting the bible and creating his own religion in the pages of the last two volumes (and yes, he really believed this stuff).

But don't let any of that discourage you. In spite of all the series' scattered madness and schizophrenic tendancies, there's a reason I pushed through for 300 issues without a single regret -- even when Cerebus offends and loses its charm, it never stops breaking the mould and striving to do something new in the medium. It's brilliant stuff; the true scary kind of brilliance that is often accompanied by madness and fits of rage. There's a level of genius and experimentation this series reaches that can't be found anywhere else, and after putting down a particularly tiresome or offensive installment for a day or two, you start to miss it like a drug. For all of these reasons, this is an indespensible must-read, something I'd even dare to consider as being the most important, intelligent, and artistic comic book series ever written. Cerebus won't uniformly entertain you throughout; it will bore you at times and outright offend or creep you out at others, but if you're at all like me, you won't regret one step of the journey, regardless.

Most of this weird experimentation and schizophrenia won't even begin to show itself until many volumes in, but these are issues you should consider now in beginning the series. Volume one may bore you, but volume two will entertain you thoroughly, volumes 3 will likely do the same and, beyond that, the road gets bumpy but worth traveling. Learn to enjoy each and every one of those odd, offensive, and/or downright maddening bumps when you get there, though. You will miss them by the series' close.