Flight

Cerebus #7

by Dave Sim, Gerhard

Reprinting Cerebus Issues 151-162

The counterpoint to the impressive foundation of the two-volume, 1,200-page Church & State is the equally impressive, equally complex Mothers & Daughters, the first volume of which is Flight. This graphic novel concerns the fight between the newly established matriarchy and the opposing "daughterarchy." Cerebus, trying to regain the power he lost when the matriarchal Cirinists took over, heads down a fateful, blood-soaked path. Dave Sim is often reviled as a misogynist because of the radical politics and philosophy laid down in his books, the groundwork of which begins here and builds toward the climax of Mothers & Daughters, which was so explosive that when it was initially released it cost Sim several close friends.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comix, Religion

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

David Victor Sim is a Canadian comic book, artist and publisher, best known as the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark.

Reviews

[Sud666 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cerebus is a monumental work. It touches on a variety of issues from politics to religion. It is also laced with humor and is a parody of sword and sorcery comics.

It is also a series best read in order. I randomly picked this volume to read and have paid the price. Some of the story makes little sense and what does tends to be on the tedious side. A strange Margaret Thatcher, touchy religious people and Punisheroach make up the cast of this out there story. Honestly, I was lost.

There is still that dry humor but lacking context the story failed to draw me in. Perhaps this is one I may revisit after reading the rest of the series, but it is not high on my list of things to read.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this volume was better than the last but that is not a high mark. Lots of mental musing by the main character on philosophical issues and not alot of action. Recommended but barely

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I decided to give Cerebus a re-read, but rather than start from the beginning I thought I'd start at volume 7. I've read the first 6 volumes several times, but I always stop at Melmoth. The ensuing volumes become increasingly challenging in a variety of ways.
I recall thinking I was really lost at some point in the latter stories and carried on due in most part to inertia and determination.

Someday I would really like to do an extended analysis of the themes and symbolism in these works. Mostly because I think I'll have to just to be able to understand it all myself, even on a basic level. So many thematic elements converge in this series that it's sometimes difficult to know which subject Sim is exploring. Political systems, gender tensions, the traditional vs. the progressive, intellectualism, religious systems, popular culture: literary culture, comics culture, film, mysticism, systems of law, relationships, childhood, psychology, repression oppression.....
And given the length of these books he doesn't just touch on the issues and move on, he dissects them to an almost claustrophobic degree. Take for example his examination of the desperate sexually repressed male in the figure of Pud Withers, a man who through many pages of internal dialogue with himself and others, forces us, the audience, to confront the realities of the relentless external pressures which lead Withers to contemplate the rape of Jaka.
It is an artistic achievement nearly on par with Toni Morrison's performance in 'The Bluest Eye'.

Sim gets a lot of criticism for being a misogynist. I'm not really knowledgeable about the work or the accusations enough to have an opinion, but I do know that LOTS of writers have problematic opinions that are reflected in their work. Who doesn't?
Maybe after this reading, if I make it, I'll be better able to understand both sides.

Update:
A wonderful book. Very dense, but rewarding. Thus far I've found nothing objectionable about Sim's themes. We'll see if that holds true in the ensuing volumes.

[Hamish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part 1 of the Mothers & Daughters story (Flight, Women, Reads and Minds make up the whole thing). This was supposed to be the big one that tied up all the loose ends and mysteries in the series (spoiler: it doesn't) and paved the way for the final 100 issues.

This particular volume in of itself is quite good, it's just hard re-reading it, knowing that it's all going to crash and burn in the next three volumes. Dave Sim said in an interview that each volume of this story should clear up the mysteries in a corresponding earlier volume (Flight for Cerebus, Women for High Society, Reads for Church & State, Minds for Jaka's Story/Melmoth). It doesn't. It brings up some mysteries from that volume, but doesn't resolve any of them and in fact creates even more. But since it's the first part of a larger story, you kind of write it off and think "oh don't worry, it'll get cleared up soon". You end up disappointed. But when you're just reading this volume, it's involving and exciting and there's such a rising action and the promise of an epic conclusion tying together a huge number of plot threads. Sim is really good at bring in all of these out of left field mind fucks that get you so intrigued, but then never adequately resolves them (this is a big issue in Church & State too). It's one giant tease.

But just for now it all works really well. If you don't think about how let down you're going to be, this is a strong read. Also I love the image of full-on barbarian Cerebus with his sword in one hand and clutching Missy in the other. A low 4.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was going well until the central character sort of wandered off into a black screen for too long. i dunno.

[Gilly Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Date Sim has well and truly gone off the deep end in this volume. The narrative isn't so much dense as it is being the literary equivalent of attempting to swim through treacle. If you haven't read all of the preceding volumes, and if you're unable to remember much of their content, you will be well and truly lost here.

The artwork continues to be excellent and has really improved since Church and State.

The Mother's vs. Daughters concept feels like an oversimplification of feminist debate shot through the lens of an unsatisfied man's experience. The characterisation of a number of players feels hollow and it feels like Sim is missing a trick with the Illusionists.

As a whole I am still enjoying the series but I can see why people would give up after Church and State, Jaka's Story or Melmouth.

I am going to continue on until the end of the saga but, I can imagine the story gets patchy from here on out as well as having sections which are difficult to follow.

[Ratiocination · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starts a four-book arc that is in many ways the best and the worst of Cerebus. I'm a completist, so I can't help but read the text portions along with the comics. The latter are among the best in the thirty-year, three hundred issue series. The former are distinctly uncomfortable. This is where Dave Sim starts to lay out the misogynist philosophy that eventually took over the later parts of Cerebus. It's ugly, and written with enough coherence to be particularly unsettling.

What's bizarre is that Sim had written, and in volumes 7-10 was continuing to write, strong, nuanced female characters. They don't really vanish until much later, though when they do it's abrupt (volume 15, Latter Days.) I can't really reconcile this. I have no idea how Sim did. I'm never quite sure what to say about the series as a result.

[Luc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much better than Melmoth, this book unfortunatelly ushers in golden age of Sim's asshatery. In the foreword, Sim claims that his views on feminism means that his average relationships only last 3 months. I'm sure it's just his views an not being a bordeline schizophrenic.

So Sim "enlightens" us with his views on feminism. Basically, a feminist is big telepathic bull dyke that thinks "penis" is a curse word and OR is a parody of a living politician (Thatcher and Copps). Men don't get it much better being either incompetents.

We do get some great exposition to Suentus Po who seems like he's a very interesting character. Also Cerebus's "vengence for the living Tarim" speech is pretty badass

[The_Mad_Swede · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collecting issues # 151­–162 of Dave Sim's 300 issues limited series Cerebus the Aardvark and being the first part of four in the Mothers & Daughters story arc, this volume returns to main action once more. The political intrigues in the Cirinist state and the opposition brewing under the surface all come back to the foreground. Cerebus' himself returns as does a lot of the supporting cast of recurrent characters, including the Cockroach. All in all, a very promising opening to this four part story arc and move back to the amazing for Sim's ongoing narrative.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

We start the second half of Cerebus with this volume, which binds together issues 151-162. In this text, we get back to the main conflicts of the Cerebus series. Some say that the story finally starts again, after being dragged down by Jaka’s Story and Melmoth, and I can see there point. Church and State I & II, while great, gave us more questions than answers and offered a whole host of odd occurrences that hadn’t been addressed up until this point. People invested in a series want answers and a three year tease is quite enough.

This is the first book in the Mother’s and Daughters arc, which will encompass the next three volumes as well, essentially ending most of the action in the series. But what a ride it will be.

An aspect that is brought out here and mentioned in the previous volume Melmoth, is the shared hivemind of the Cirinist and their ability to communicate telepathically. This seems a deliberate spin on the communist collective element present in many radicalized leftist organizations. The idea that you must either “believe in every idea we have or you are our enemy” is very present in this mental communication. It is expressed in a very similar method as “sending” is in Elfquest.

The Cirinists have run wild, executing anyone that stands in their way. We discover what has happened to all of the gold collected by Cerebus during his tenure as Pope. Cirin plans to melt and pour it together in a huge sphere, so that she may have her own ascension, similar to the one Cerebus had at the end of Church and State.

We see a general wrapping up of characters and concepts that appeared in the first volume of the series, in some of the first issues even. He begins to tie them all together in what is termed the “great change” that is to come. The succubi from issue 2 dissipates into nothing; the character of Death which may or may not have been Tarim, known for his cowled pure black figure and an hourglass dangling before him, has his life force drained away by the chaos gems; the Pigts of Northland kill each other off; two versions of the Judge appear and begin arguing etc etc.

The odd events surrounding Cerebus are reminiscent of those in Church and State, indicating a cosmic event will soon occur. Miniature Cerebus’s appear around people, threatening them. People disappear at Cerebus’s command, as did Astoria just before she murdered the Eastern Pontiff. Vision of Gods appear on Earth and dreams, things change, fall apart, and cannot hold together. The Roach, now Punisherroach, has accidentally shifted his consciousness to a higher plane and begins reading people’s minds and gains insight into the higher spheres of existence. This seems to be mostly due to his mental illness.

These random causations, are a result of Cerebus’s eventual ascension to the eighth sphere, and are act of wills and enlightenment. The sphere’s referenced here are representative of the planets, in this case it is Neptune. it is so far away and so stressful a journey that only a mental construct of Cerebus’s can be projected there. This eventually causes (I’m extrapolating here, none of it is explicitly explained) the ripple effect of visions and tiny Cerebi appearing.

In his journey, he is given an alternate vision of his future one where he eventually defeats the Cirinists and becomes the toast of the Iest once again. Cerebus rejects this, because of what the Judge states, but as we will see all visions of his future are true, just not true at the same time.

As you may have noted, at the time this was written there were nine spheres, Pluto was still considered a planet (and it still is to me, damnit!). But what is there? That will be revealed in volume 10, Minds.

Cerebus’s next ascension, this time a mental rather than physical one, leads to a chess game with the third Aardvark, Suenteus Po, shown here an an ethereal construct, barely outlined. This is the culmination of Suenteus Po’s various lives, possibly an oversoul collecting the experiences and knowledge of his various incarnations. It appears that all of the other conversations with this character (in the Mind Games I-VI issues) were aspects of his consciousness or temporal shifts in the other spheres, resulting in him talking to a previous incarnation of the Suenteus Po.

The Po placed here has previously been an incarnated as some of the most significant innovators and revolutionaries in the continent’s history. And in every case his revolutions has descended into vice, corruption, decay, and collapsed. Then he is reincarnated again to start to the entire process over. So in this life, and due to the “magnifier” effect that Aardvarks have upon the world (more on that in future posts), he has opted out in this life, living in complete seclusion with no friends or family. His only indulgence is a chessboard. He will not interfere, because he sees that it leads nowhere.

This encounter leads to my first real negative criticism of the Cerebus storyline. There are simply too times that Cerebus accidently bumps into an omnipresent being who knows everything and fills in our uncaring anti-hero on a much of major plot points and background detail. This has happened twice so far (the Judge and Suenteus Po) and will occur three more times during the course of the series. What these characters have to say and their perspectives is fascinating and well-written, but such a device begins to wear thin when their main purpose is to disseminate information.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of Mothers & Daughters, and Mothers & Daughters is or might be a lot of things: the conclusion of the 'main' Cerebus storyline; a speedrun remix and retcon of the first 150 issues of that storyline; a gigantic rugpull for the readers of those 150 issues; a 50-chapter postmodern metatextual graphic novel about feminism and its discontents; the point where Dave Sim fully announces himself as one of said discontents; the point where a lot of readers (me included) quit; a smorgasbord of astonishing cartooning; a right fucking mess.

If there's a theme to Mothers & Daughters - and there is; in fact there are dozens - it's the tyranny of expectation. You expect certain things - from life, from a story, from a marriage, from the world, from a £1.25 a month comic - and your expectations, from a particular point of view, are themselves a compromise, a set of unexamined assumptions that are also traps. Mothers & Daughters is, among all the things mentioned above, an attempt to overturn those expectations and assumptions. So on the most basic level: you expected the story of Cerebus The Aardvark to continue along certain lines; you expected its creator to think and behave in certain ways; you expected that all the bits you liked already will continue to mean largely what you thought they meant. And this is the point in the Cerebus experience where Dave leans down and whispers "no".

(OK, actually, that's in two books' time.)

I don't think thumbing your nose at expectations is a bad thing to do. My favourite science fiction writer is Gene Wolfe, who deliberately designed books so that a lot of their sense was only available on a re-read. Cerebus itself has already worked like this: Church And State becomes more comprehensible when you know a) what an Ascencion is and b) that almost every character in the story is interpreting Cerebus' actions as trying to achieve one. There's a perspective which says that the information revealed near the end of Mothers And Daughters has a similar context-rewriting effect (I only sort of agree, but that's a story for another review).

What I think is true, though, is that Flight doesn't manage its revisiting and rewriting of expectations terribly well. In one way, it's brilliant: everything in the comic for a year has been deferring gratification for the moment Cerebus springs into action and takes on the Cirinists. Here is where it happens, and it's very quickly apparent that Cerebus is absolutely no match for the situation he's put himself into and is going to get a lot of people killed. The thing readers have been wanting for at least 12 months goes wheeling off in a different direction.

But the rest of Flight can't match the adrenaline rush of that opening (and in fairness it's not trying to, it's just what it is doing isn't as successful for me). The opening is the first of the "beware of what you wish for"s in Flight - much of the rest of it is a tour of moments from the very earliest phase of Cerebus, revisiting concepts and characters from the late 70s: Sim's juvenilia. We see K'Cor, the Pigts, even Death. The Roach and Elrod are a meaningful part of the action for the first time in 60 issues. And the main story comes to hinge on a chess game between Cerebus and Suenteus Po. Sim returns to older art and lettering styles, too - Cerebus' journey to the Eighth Sphere is told with the familar "omniscient narrator" font and with plenty of visual references to the original Mind Game story. The Pigts stuff reaches further back to the Windsor-Smith Conan pastiche of the very first issues. It's impressive - of course it is - that Sim can slip into those old styles like a vest. But...

On reading this stuff at the time a little voice spoke up - OK, what's actually the point of all this? Those old stories weren't exactly the greatest: they were a young cartoonist working through some heavy influences and discovering more of what he wanted to do and be. Returning to them smacked of an attempt to force-fit significance: Cerebus is a complete 300 issue work, ergo what happened in those first dozen comics must be relevant to the wider conception. Cerebus had been self-indulgent before - as a reader, you knew to expect that. But it hadn't ever seemed pedantic.

Thinking about it in terms of the full conception of Mothers & Daughters - as the beginning of an acceleration to a conclusion, and a way to serve notice that much in those earlier issues is unreliable, and a last look at What Cerebus Used To Be Like before the inflection point we now know was coming - yes, all the nostalgic sequences make sense. But they still don't add much: Flight is the least essential part of Mothers & Daughters, even if that also means it's the least obnoxious. There are brilliant moments and conceptions, as always - those opening action sequences; the weird mindfuck sequence of the giant and the tiny Cerebuses as he heads upwards; the collages of mouths in darkness, a wonderful visual way of showing people trying to make sense of life in a totalitarian state. It's just they're all in service to a comic which suddenly feels like it's fussily going over old ground.

[StrictlySequential · Rating 2 out of 5]

Third Printing = December 1993 = __/5000

Preposterous throughout with an irritating and ambiguous ending.

I would discourage anybody who isn't "married" to the series. Sure, it has it's moments but they are few and far between. He goes off on prose constantly. The guy is really high on himself at this point but really he's skimping on the art and spinning an over-bloated plot. His elevated mysticism aspect is the worst part. He waxes high but very dry.

Plus, he gets way too deep into the spectacular magic- to the point where you cannot even keep straight all the fantastical things occurring at the same time.

But worst of all, he skips from character to character so frequently that sometimes they only get a panel at a time. You never get more than two pages of anything before a switch through a bunch of others in the current cast- sometimes he runs through everybody in a circle.

The art is the worst I've ever seen from him and it seems that Gerhard was not even present. It is like he spent all his time on writing and drew it on the fly.

I'M DONE WITH THE SERIES unless someone hands me the next book for free (which I probably wouldn't finish anyway).

[Andrew Barnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is where Cerebus began to be hard to read for me. I loved Cerebus up until this book. There is nothing like Cerebus, the books are funnier and more thought provoking than I ever expected. I'll probably forget how weird this book made me feel at times and read the next one in a year or so, based off of my nostalgia for the earlier books. But hopefully I read this review first, and then go and read something else, and remember Cerebus for the good times we had, and not descend into the isolated, misogynistic, mystical, masochistic dungeon where Sim trapped his mind in these later years.

[Nathu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flight is a little inbetweeny. It's a nice story building book but it feels less substantial than the books on either side of it. Cerebus's rampage is fun and exciting as well as Cirin's response, and I like the storyline with K'Cor. The Pig'ts where a lil boring imo... Idk as I'm writing this review I'm remembering more that happens here, I guess it is a little content dense for such a short arc. I think I'm 50/50 on it! Sorry if you were looking to this review for any actual insight.

[Tegiminis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely sick fight scenes ("Kill him!" cacophony in particular) and a return of a bunch of parody stuff that had sorta fallen to the wayside in Jaka's Story and Melmoth. We get some more cosmologically significant events - like the chess meeting - and Sim refines his taste for blood that would come to a head in Reads. Tons of threads get wrapped up, and this also means "reality" feels more intrusive. Magic is leaving the comic; magic is leaving the world.

[Rockito · Rating 5 out of 5]

This begins "Mothers & Daughters", the second longest arc if I'm not mistaken. First story without and "in-between" issue. Cerebus has snapped out of his catatonic-state and finds himself caught in the tangle of the ensuing events on the Cirinist-ruled Iest, this time taking a more active role. The secuencial-narrative is superb.

[Thomas Radigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cerebus leads a brief failed revolt against the Cirinists, then disappears, being rescued by Suenteus Po. What actually is going on? I got lost...the whole series is becoming scattershot and starting to unravel. At this time, I wondered why I was bothering to follow this series anymore.

[Ben Brackett · Rating 1 out of 5]

Appears to be one of those things that was called "groundbreaking" at the time because it was doing something so radically different that people didn't have the perspective to be able to say yeah it's different, but its still trash.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

The art is still good, but the writing is not. The author's misogyny really starts to come to the fore in this volume. Combine that with lengthy pretentious philosophizing and you get very little worth reading here.

[Vincent Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Idk pretty mid. Way too many different story aspects going on. I’d rather Cerebus not show up at all than just talk to god moronically for 200 pages where I have to read a shit ton and it’s just all vague nonsense

[Mauricio Garcia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not that it is bad in itself, but rather this is pure set-up for the next book. Hence my rating.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

seems like it's downhill from here, many pages of just text with a single illustration, that's not comix dave

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the slow crawl of the previous two volumes, things actually happen in this one. Or almost. Cerebus is once again off on some magical mystery tour of space where he's lectured at length on the history of whatever, but down in the real world, every character from the past seems to be entangled in a some kind of vast, all-encompassing something or other, full of portent and strange happenings, and it all seems rather exciting. Or at any rate like it's leading to something exciting. Will it get there? No. It won't. But up to this point, it feels like important, exciting things are moments away from happening.

As for Dave Sim's blossoming insanity, it's hard to spot here, if you don't know what's soon to come. If you do, it's all a bit obvious. The evil matriarchy has taken power, and men have to fight back if they want to save their, I guess, humanity? Or something? And because the Roach gets it on with a prostitute, the giant Cerebus statue that would signal his glorious return vanishes, and all is lost? Maybe? It's hard to tell. Which, at least for this volume, is as much blessing as curse. Which is to say, this is kind of enjoyable, in an obscure, vaguely philosophical way. I think? Let's just say it's confusing enough that one can decide it's probably soon to reveal its brilliance. Which, again, it certainly won't, but if you didn't know that, you'd have no reason to. Yet.

And the art. This madman sure can draw.

[Sean Samonas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here we start to see the plot re-emerge from the brief biography of Oscar Wilde. There isn't a whole lot to say about this one...things start to get interesting again because things are happening with Cerebus.

It's a pretty simple formula, but one that seems to elude Dave Sims throughout the series. I bought the book because the title was "Cerebus". If you show me Cerebus doing things, I will be happy. Because that is why I bought the book.

However, Dave seems more and more obsessed with making sure that the audience "gets" his philosophy. Now, I have nothing against authors having weird philosophies that I may find offensive. Several very good authors, in fact, have well known offensive philosophies. The problem I have with Dave's approach is that he sacrifices the narrative in order to argue his philosophy in the book.

He continues to simply make broad caricatures out of the feminist movement by showing how utterly bad life is under the matriarchal ruling of the Cirinists. Handled slightly differently, this could be a compelling story. I would love to read a version where the argument made isn't that things are bad simply because someone without a penis is in charge.

That aside, we finally start to see some pay-off for the series and the beginnings of a climax for the story that began way back in Church and State 1.

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Things start getting really strange here. Sim's efforts to bring all the disparate elements from early in the series are especially evident here, with the reappearance not only of the Pigts and K'Cor but also of the demon-thing from waaaaay back in issue issue 2 as multiple narrative strands unfold and accelerate in what feels rather Alan Moore-ish form. Sim seems to think it all makes sense, and character certainly spend enough time talking about the complexity of what is going on (and about its subjectivity; by now in the series, Sim is very much committed to the idea that reality is multiple and highly plastic. What this means in terms of this as a (supposedly) coherent narrative unit is that a lot of shit happens that makes no sense within the volume but that presumably will come together at some point in the future. I have my doubts. On the other hand, we do get Punisherroach, a particularly fascinating instance of Sim personifying misogyny as a sexually repressed/anxious murderer of women as a compensation for his own sexual hang-ups. I'm not sure Sim would endorse that reading, but I say trust the art, not the artist. And of course, Sim's and Gerhard's visuals continue to be impressive and innovative. The story really does begin to go off the rails, though.

[Felix · Rating 2 out of 5]

After an initial Cerebus-gone-berserk-on-Cirinists bloodbath, which constitutes a welcome fast-paced straightforward action sequence after the excruciatingly slow-motion of "Melmoth", the plot fragments into many alternating threads that don't connect very well. There is Cerbus ascending through several spheres and playing chess with what I believe is supposed to be Tarim; there's comic-relief in the panels concerned with a sexually repressed Punisher-Roach and Elrod, there's a religious conflict between pigts; there's great Cirin, Thatcher and others being concerned with some spherical construction; and several other threads that I cannot quite identify nor describe.

Yeah, uhm, well… I don't really get what this is all about, but what the heck… I'll read on to see where this weird stuff is heading…

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reprinting Cerebus Issues 151-162

The counterpoint to the impressive foundation of the two-volume, 1,200-page Church & State is the equally impressive, equally complex Mothers & Daughters, the first volume of which is Flight. This graphic novel concerns the fight between the newly established matriarchy and the opposing "daughterarchy." Cerebus, trying to regain the power he lost when the matriarchal Cirinists took over, heads down a fateful, blood-soaked path. Dave Sim is often reviled as a misogynist because of the radical politics and philosophy laid down in his books, the groundwork of which begins here and builds toward the climax of Mothers & Daughters, which was so explosive that when it was initially released it cost Sim several close friends.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

As others have said, this volume brings mixed feelings for those of us who have read all the way to the end.
Reading it month on month ( when the release schedule allowed) this felt like a return to form, much more like C & S than the previous two volumes.
it is pacy, exciting and witty in ways that gave me great hope for the later volumes.


Sadly however it also contains the seeds of weaknesses that mar the later books.
Sim still writes interesting stories about women and creates great female characters, but the text sections of the book show a different side to the author's psyche. They are always thought provoking and cogent but increasingly one wonders about Sim's mental health as he reveals concerns about the emasculation of men as women become more strident in their feminism.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story begins to pick up again after the very static previous volume. Some of the many loose ends from earlier volumes begin to come together, but many more mysteries remain. (From what I've heard, most never will be really resolved.) Some parts leave me scratching my head too much, but the parts that take place down in the city states (rather than in some heavenly realm) are still quite interesting.

[Gordon McAlpin · Rating 3 out of 5]

At some point here or shortly thereafter, Dave Sim basically lost his shit. He lost a lot of interest in drawing comics, too, judging from the interminable, self-indulgent prose pieces that he began to increasingly overuse in his books.

I kept hoping the series would return to the glory of High Society and Church & State. It never did.