shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Feb 3, 2016 8:14:31 GMT -5
I am at what you would consider chapter #18 in the first volume. I have to say that I hate Lord Julius and his whole grocho shtick. Sorry to hear that. I often found him funnier than the real thing (and I'm a big Marx Brothers fan). Unfortunately for you, Lord Julius will come back many times throughout the series.
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shaxper
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Posts: 22,409
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Post by shaxper on Feb 3, 2016 8:16:56 GMT -5
Like 20 volumes behind you in Usagi. You won't believe how many Jiros I've seen in that time (and why does that sound naughty??).
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 3, 2016 8:43:16 GMT -5
Reading the first few issues of Cerebus, I am reminded of a story told by (appropriately enough) Barry Smith in an interview: back in his school days, during an art class, a teacher had come up behind him to look at how young barry was drawing the male model sitting in front. As you'd expect, Barry was drawing the guy in a typical comic-booky fashion, and he thinks he had even started drawing a cape on him. The teacher fumed and grew red and said something like "this isn't drawing, laddie; it's bloody make believe!" That's a bit how Dave Sim's art comes across in Cerebus #1: while things like the weird-looking dragon look spontaneous enough, most of the images are attempts at imitating Barry Smith's work on Conan the barbarian. Grids covered by ivy, medallions with invisible cords, swords with short, lumpy crossguards, esoteric wavy white shapes drawn over doors, tiled floors, Cerebus' helmet... they're all from Barry Smith's imagination. Likewise the rendition of the human anatomy, very Smith-like in the first issues. The opening scene in issue #2 is almost lifted from "The frost giant's daughter", from Savage Tales #1... but how to blame Sim? That story is a classic's classic, and well-worth emulating! Still, Dave already shows glimpses of his own blossoming artistic prowess: an earnest-looking Cerebus bouncing up and down his horse introduces a sharp contrast between seriousness and humour, and it suggests that this book will not just be a parody of Smith's Conan: it has a sort of Looney Tunes quality to it. The pacing and storytelling are already very solid, despite the hesitant nature of the art. To paraphrase Stan Lee talking to a young Herb Trimpe: "he can't draw worth a damn, but his storytelling is terrific". And as we now know, Dave's art would grow by leaps and bounds, in a spectacular fashion, in a mere matter of months. Most artists have such a period of growth in which a remarkable development can be observed over a very short time: Smith himself knew such a period, and the enthusiastic but simple Kirby emulation from X-Men and SHIELD promptly gave way to some of comicdom's best art ever before Conan the barbarian had seen twenty issues. Dave would do the same, and by the time of, say, Cerebus #11, a casual reader of the mag might have been justified in asking "wait, is this the same artist as in issue #1 " A quality I find in the earliest issues of Cerebus is their great honesty. Yes, Sim may be trying hard to be Barry Smith, but it's not as if he's hiding the fact. He also refrains from amateurish self-deprecation, and he treats his premise seriously, respecting both the characters and his readers. It's a sword and sorcery comic with a funny animal as its star, and that's how it'll be handled. It's not something else disguised as a sword and sorcery book with a funny animal as its star. By contrast, I am reminded of some amateur comics published here a few decades ago, in which a certain artist clearly wanted to draw a serious Batman comic but had to settle for a parody (decidedly not very funny) in which some deprecating (and also clearly disingenuous) comments were made about super-hero comics in general, comments that really came across as a justification for drawing a super hero. The whole thing felt fake). The first laugh-out-loud moment, for me, came in issue #2: it's the scene where Cerebus has to face a Borealan in single combat, and manages to knock him out; and while the Borealan chief who oversaw the fight goes on and on about how Cerebus' sense of honour will probably prevent him from killing his downed opponent even though the fight was to the death, Cerebus just stabs the unconscious guy off-panel. When it comes to his comics, just as happened with Woody Allen movies, Dave probably received many comments over the years about how some people missed the "earlier, funnier ones". Cerebus could be very funny indeed! I'm really glad that such a mag could have been created. It took vision and hutzpah, and a lot of dedication, and not only did it become something great in itself, it also paved the way for a lot of other great independent titles.
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 3, 2016 11:42:13 GMT -5
I am at what you would consider chapter #18 in the first volume. I have to say that I hate Lord Julius and his whole grocho shtick. Sorry to hear that. I often found him funnier than the real thing (and I'm a big Marx Brothers fan). Unfortunately for you, Lord Julius will come back many times throughout the series. I have never watched a Marx brothers movie. I don't plan to.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 3, 2016 11:44:01 GMT -5
Sorry to hear that. I often found him funnier than the real thing (and I'm a big Marx Brothers fan). Unfortunately for you, Lord Julius will come back many times throughout the series. I have never watched a Marx brothers movie. I don't plan to. You poor thing.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Feb 3, 2016 11:50:52 GMT -5
Sorry to hear that. I often found him funnier than the real thing (and I'm a big Marx Brothers fan). Unfortunately for you, Lord Julius will come back many times throughout the series. I have never watched a Marx brothers movie. I don't plan to. That's truly sad. There's no such thing as a perfect Marx Brothers movie. Live performances were their specialty, and they saw movie making as a cheap gimmick to cash in on that they seldom took too seriously. But even still, they had a wit, style, and irreverence that was one of a kind. Truly, they were anarchy in action.
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 3, 2016 12:07:00 GMT -5
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Feb 3, 2016 12:25:21 GMT -5
Stop encouraging us to push such things upon you. When you do things like start reading Usagi Yojimbo and Cerebus, all you're doing is leading us on
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 3, 2016 12:34:56 GMT -5
You guys are costing me money. 3 Usagi books and a Cerebus tpb are hurting my wallet. Don't make me go out and get some Marx brothers movies...
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 3, 2016 13:04:01 GMT -5
You could probably find the Marx brothers on some sort of streaming service, likely for free... they may not even be under copyright any more. I've never had any interested in them either (perhaps when they are Parodied in Looney Tunes).
I hadn't thought of making an analogy to Bugs Bunny before, but that's spot on... especially considering all the homage/spoof characters used.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Feb 3, 2016 13:17:06 GMT -5
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 3, 2016 14:19:41 GMT -5
Bugs was explicitly based upon Groucho Marx. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 3, 2016 19:41:21 GMT -5
True, but he totally transcended that to be his own thing, IMO.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Feb 5, 2016 21:34:44 GMT -5
My comments on #2 Captive in Boreala Lots of place names and gods are thrown about in this one.... No idea if they are a plan and on purpose or just for a Conan-like mood. Cerebus wields two short swords instead of a longsword.. no comment as to why. This one is clearly 'Frost Giant's Daughter'.. though with a decidedly less pleasant daughter. The knife fight is hilarious. Cerebus likes to swear by Clovis' various body parts... I though he usually used 'Tarim' in a very similar way that Conan used 'Crom'... perhaps it's coming. Another big fall with no consquences. Another famous jewel that's a fake/trap. Not a huge fan of using the same trick in back to back issues. Overall, not as good as #1.. but I recall really liking #3.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Feb 6, 2016 11:30:12 GMT -5
I think you're right, Wildfire: at the start of the series, the names of gods were used a little at random. It's only later that two of them were given a clear distinctiveness: the male god figure Tarim, and its female opposite Terim. As for Clovis, it was dismissed by Cirin as a mere tribal construction conflating other mythological figures.
The Frost Giant's Daughter's influence is pretty obvious here, isn't it? That doesn't come as a surprise. Anyone who wants to draw like Barry Smith starts by aping that tale, The song of Red Sonja and Red Nails. (I would know... I did exactly that in my teens!)
What I really liked in this story, art-wise, is the way Dave uses white ink spatters to simulate light. He probably uses a toothbrush to do it, and the result looks very good indeed!
Something is yet unexplained (and would remain so for a very long time: just what is an aardvark? Nobody seems to react overmuch to the fact that Cerebus isn't human, suggesting that there are more aardvarks around; however, we'll soon see that it isn't so. It's like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon: human characters aren't surprised by the fact they're talking with a bipedal, talking rabbit. I don't mind it at all, but before we learned what aardvarks were, I did wonder about it.
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