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Cerebus
Cerebus, Vol. 10: Minds
Reprinting Cerebus Issues 187-200
286 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1996
About the author
Dave Sim
462 books142 followersDavid Victor Sim is a Canadian comic book, artist and publisher, best known as the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
May 20, 2024
While the series as a whole is sadly sliding downhill as the writer is starting to use it as a commentary on his religious and political views there are still a few spots of the former brilliance. Recommended but barely
June 9, 2013
So here's the moment that Sim takes what was left of the fourth wall and sets about hammering it into a fine powder. No, Cerebus's world will never make any more sense than it does, right now, but on the other hand it all makes perfect sense, and that sense is: it's stuff that Dave Sim thought up. Over a long period of time. During which his ideas about comics, about narrative, and about reality changed quite a bit. And during which he kept producing the comic at a steady pace, twenty pages a month, regardless of what the hell he was doing or what the hell was going on in his head at the time.
Honestly, I probably prefer this, as a resolution, to the sort of internally-consistent, narratively-coherent afterthought that I'm sure Sim could have come up with in its place, had he wanted. Cerebus is a comic that Sim thought up and committed to 300 issues of, and by issue 200 he'd been all over the place with it, and to think of Cerebus as unified by any principle more significant than the fact that Cerebus was what Dave Sim would be doing until he hit issue 300 would be foolish.
And if you can accept this, and get over the disappointment that you're no longer allowed to think of Cerebus's story as an epic fantasy in the usual sense, you're primed for the next hundred issues. Sure, there will never be a conventional payoff to the rich narrative that sustained the comic for most of the last 200 issues. But you do get to look forward to a hundred more issues of Dave Sim creating the sort of comics art he feels like making at the time, and as an added bonus those issues will continue to be about some of the characters you've grown fond of.
Honestly, I probably prefer this, as a resolution, to the sort of internally-consistent, narratively-coherent afterthought that I'm sure Sim could have come up with in its place, had he wanted. Cerebus is a comic that Sim thought up and committed to 300 issues of, and by issue 200 he'd been all over the place with it, and to think of Cerebus as unified by any principle more significant than the fact that Cerebus was what Dave Sim would be doing until he hit issue 300 would be foolish.
And if you can accept this, and get over the disappointment that you're no longer allowed to think of Cerebus's story as an epic fantasy in the usual sense, you're primed for the next hundred issues. Sure, there will never be a conventional payoff to the rich narrative that sustained the comic for most of the last 200 issues. But you do get to look forward to a hundred more issues of Dave Sim creating the sort of comics art he feels like making at the time, and as an added bonus those issues will continue to be about some of the characters you've grown fond of.
February 17, 2008
Collecting issues # 187–200 of Dave Sim's 300 issues limited series Cerebus the Aardvark and being the last part of four in the Mothers & Daughters story arc, this volume returns to the main action once more, while simultaneously offering a much better metafictional intrusion. Cerebus' creator, Dave (presumably Sim, and clearly not, then, Viktor Davis from Reads), has a long conversation with Cerebus about the story so far, basically. As such, it becomes a superbly written and drawn meeting and conversation which is both metafictional (in that the writer/artist inserting himself into the fiction as writer/artist/creator) and metaphysical (in that the relation between a creator and that which he has created is studied). After the hardships of Reads, Minds closes the Mothers & Daughters story arc in a most satisfying way – with Dave Sim back on top of his creative game.
November 12, 2024
Gorgeous artwork and what could be considered the end of the story.
October 10, 2025
Thankfully better than the preceding chapter 'Reads', but even if the author self-insert is handled better, it's still (as always) a literary device that ruins the immersion if not makes it completely incredulous.
Regardless, this feels like a good and unexpected way to resolve the whole Mothers and Daughters arc, to resolve the Cirin and Cerebus fight and explain the geopolitical landscape and why Cerebus was never gonna succeed in any of his endeavours, in a way that feels consistent in-story, and without any expected clichés (well, maybe that letter that Jaka writes and what she does afterwards seems terribly obvious) and ultimately this even feels as an end to the whole story, or that it was supposed to happen in issue 290 not in the 200.
Minds feels like a bookend and that the next hundred issues will be more of an epilogue or afterword, so it leaves me sad to know that this is a goodbye, and a bittersweet one at that (with all the controversial nonsense of 'Reads' and the 'Aardvark Comment' "gender wars" responses in this book).
Regardless, this feels like a good and unexpected way to resolve the whole Mothers and Daughters arc, to resolve the Cirin and Cerebus fight and explain the geopolitical landscape and why Cerebus was never gonna succeed in any of his endeavours, in a way that feels consistent in-story, and without any expected clichés (well, maybe that letter that Jaka writes and what she does afterwards seems terribly obvious) and ultimately this even feels as an end to the whole story, or that it was supposed to happen in issue 290 not in the 200.
Minds feels like a bookend and that the next hundred issues will be more of an epilogue or afterword, so it leaves me sad to know that this is a goodbye, and a bittersweet one at that (with all the controversial nonsense of 'Reads' and the 'Aardvark Comment' "gender wars" responses in this book).
February 2, 2024
Minds is the first ending of Cerebus - if you were reading the comic for the fantasy elements, for the story of Cerebus' rise to power and fall from grace in Iest that began in earnest with High Society and climaxed with his brutal one-on-one fight with Cirin in Reads, that finishes here.
Except, honestly, it sort of doesnt. Parts of those things - the disposition of power in Dave Sim's fantasy world; how Cerebus deals with authority and success - recur in future books. The broad arc of Cirin's matriarchy is left for later. We'll see many characters of note again at least once, even if this is it for most of the fan favourites. What people mean when they say that Cerebus ends with #200 - the end of Minds - is that this is the final time the book consistently feels like it did in its heyday, the commercial peak of Church And State. Cerebus has already proved it can break that template: this is the final time it returns to it.
Let's take it on those terms, then. Is it a good ending, does it fulfil the promise of High Society and Church And State II? Yes. No. It depends. Yes: Minds is a considerably friendlier book than Reads. Sim isn't exactly working to regain readers' trust (as will become even clearer, he doesn't care, and I don't think he could have made the good parts of Cerebus if he did.) But he's not trying to actively alienate them either. Minds is a beautifully told story, the Sim/Gerhard pairing on peak form - Gerhard's journey through the cosmos and his vision of ravaged Pluto is especially spectacular, but Sim is drawing his heart out too, from the desperate aardvarks clinging to what's left of their throne to the "what if" sequences exploring alternative futures for Cerebus if he married Jaka. There's much less formal experimentation, but what there is works superbly - the page in which the force of Cirin's telepathic denial literally breaks all other thought and speech bubbles is wonderful; the "injury to the eye" section one of the most disturbing point-of-view passages I've seen, even if it is set to a Pink Floyd song.
So it's possible to enjoy reading Minds in a way it wasn't possible to enjoy reading Reads - there's no text lumps, no whiplash shifts in pace, no brain-curdling gynophobia. And yet Reads happened. Viktor Davis exists, and he is, in some sense, writing this comic. The promise of Cerebus has always been that when you turn a page you might see something you've never seen done in comics before. But after Reads, you also know that when you turn a page you might see Sim trying to persuade you that you or your partner is a brain leech. It creates, shall we say, a barrier. Sim is on his best behaviour in Minds - he has a job to finish, and it's not until later books that the ideas presented in Reads bubble back up to the surface of Cerebus. But this isn't a comic you can read innocent of what Sim thinks any more (and that's the way he wanted it).
So it looks very good, and it feels a little bad, but how is it as an ending? At this point I have to spoil Minds - if you've come this far and you genuinely don't know who Cerebus meets on his Second Ascension, stop reading.
The bulk of Minds is a lengthy conversation between Cerebus and "Dave" aka Dave Sim, who has dropped his text-section identity now he's chatting to his creation rather than his readers. He doesn't wander up and shake Cerebus' paw: it's handled more elegantly, via thought bubbles intruding on Cerebus' own consciousness. Dave reveals a few cogent background details to Cerebus, tries to show him what'll happen if he gets what he thinks he wants, and comes close to abandoning him before dropping him back into the final third of the comic.
Your feelings about Minds as a satisfying ending - to Mothers & Daughters, to Cerebus so far, or even just to itself - are going to depend on how you view this kind of metafictional self-insert. Some people love it - probably a dwindling band, the more it's done, though I feel like it's out of fashion now, as with a lot of techniques Sim likes. Some people will throw the book down just as much as if Viktor had popped up with some finer points on gender. I'm in the middle - an eyeroll, an OK, and a let's give this the benefit of the doubt.
(Sim claimed in interviews and in the comic itself that this meeting was always planned, and while I'm never sure how much he revises his own backstory I can absolutely imagine "Cerebus talks to his creator" as part of the initial "300 issues" revelation in 1979)
I can see a lot of ways in which it works. Having comprehensively undermined The Judge, his in-story omniscient figure, Sim can't just introduce another, bigger Judge for a bigger Ascension. Cerebus has to actually either meet God, or meet someone who can credibly serve that function. Sim at this point doesn't actually believe in God - and Tarim, Cerebus' God, has become sort-of ridiculous in the context of being a part of so many narrative jokes at this point anyway. So meeting God would be less impressive than meeting "Dave" (and not meeting him will turn out to be very useful for Sim later on).
And besides, having Dave turn up links back to both the text pieces in Reads, not just the metafictional one. Sim is a credible divine stand-in because - unlike Steve Gerber or Grant Morrison or any other comics writer who'd played the metafictional card before - he truly does have sole control over Cerebus and his universe. Meeting your creation is the prerogative of the true creator, the self-publisher.
All that said, half of Dave's narrative function in the story is to deliver a huge amount of exposition, and big lumpy exposition in the closing chapters of your epic is a problem. The best parts are the parts that dig into the backstory of Cirin, because they serve as a sort of epilogue to the parts of Mothers & Daughters that are about the women *characters* rather than about 'women'. And they're one of the final times Sim writes something which actually feels cogent and well-observed about politics, in this case, the nature and risks of revolutionary movements. But there's also a supposedly big revelation about Cerebus, and why he didn't become a great leader, and it really feels unnecessary - answering questions that feel unimportant relative to the comic we've actually been reading all these years and change nothing much on a re-read. Like the parade of old faces in Flight, there's something a bit finicky about it, a fussy tying up of loose ends, to persuade us all that old material really was important.
The other half of the Dave section works much better - a look forward instead of back, as Cerebus petitions Dave to make Jaka love him, and Dave shows Cerebus how unhappy that will make everyone. These sequences are powerfully done, though as with any fantasy sequence their declared nature as fantasy blunts their effect a bit. But they are a kind of emotional ending for Mothers & Daughters as a whole, a novel which began with Cerebus spurred into murderous action by his obsession with Jaka, and ends with Cerebus given the chance to show growth as a person and choose not to pursue it.
So Mothers & Daughters ends with a conversation between 'father' and 'son', and the reader who wants to go no further with "Dave" or Viktor Davis or any of his ideas can lay the series down and forget the rest exists and think, wow, Cerebus, that was a weird comic, but when it was good it was REALLY good. The thing is, that's still true of the rest, but it will never be good in *that* way again.
Except, honestly, it sort of doesnt. Parts of those things - the disposition of power in Dave Sim's fantasy world; how Cerebus deals with authority and success - recur in future books. The broad arc of Cirin's matriarchy is left for later. We'll see many characters of note again at least once, even if this is it for most of the fan favourites. What people mean when they say that Cerebus ends with #200 - the end of Minds - is that this is the final time the book consistently feels like it did in its heyday, the commercial peak of Church And State. Cerebus has already proved it can break that template: this is the final time it returns to it.
Let's take it on those terms, then. Is it a good ending, does it fulfil the promise of High Society and Church And State II? Yes. No. It depends. Yes: Minds is a considerably friendlier book than Reads. Sim isn't exactly working to regain readers' trust (as will become even clearer, he doesn't care, and I don't think he could have made the good parts of Cerebus if he did.) But he's not trying to actively alienate them either. Minds is a beautifully told story, the Sim/Gerhard pairing on peak form - Gerhard's journey through the cosmos and his vision of ravaged Pluto is especially spectacular, but Sim is drawing his heart out too, from the desperate aardvarks clinging to what's left of their throne to the "what if" sequences exploring alternative futures for Cerebus if he married Jaka. There's much less formal experimentation, but what there is works superbly - the page in which the force of Cirin's telepathic denial literally breaks all other thought and speech bubbles is wonderful; the "injury to the eye" section one of the most disturbing point-of-view passages I've seen, even if it is set to a Pink Floyd song.
So it's possible to enjoy reading Minds in a way it wasn't possible to enjoy reading Reads - there's no text lumps, no whiplash shifts in pace, no brain-curdling gynophobia. And yet Reads happened. Viktor Davis exists, and he is, in some sense, writing this comic. The promise of Cerebus has always been that when you turn a page you might see something you've never seen done in comics before. But after Reads, you also know that when you turn a page you might see Sim trying to persuade you that you or your partner is a brain leech. It creates, shall we say, a barrier. Sim is on his best behaviour in Minds - he has a job to finish, and it's not until later books that the ideas presented in Reads bubble back up to the surface of Cerebus. But this isn't a comic you can read innocent of what Sim thinks any more (and that's the way he wanted it).
So it looks very good, and it feels a little bad, but how is it as an ending? At this point I have to spoil Minds - if you've come this far and you genuinely don't know who Cerebus meets on his Second Ascension, stop reading.
The bulk of Minds is a lengthy conversation between Cerebus and "Dave" aka Dave Sim, who has dropped his text-section identity now he's chatting to his creation rather than his readers. He doesn't wander up and shake Cerebus' paw: it's handled more elegantly, via thought bubbles intruding on Cerebus' own consciousness. Dave reveals a few cogent background details to Cerebus, tries to show him what'll happen if he gets what he thinks he wants, and comes close to abandoning him before dropping him back into the final third of the comic.
Your feelings about Minds as a satisfying ending - to Mothers & Daughters, to Cerebus so far, or even just to itself - are going to depend on how you view this kind of metafictional self-insert. Some people love it - probably a dwindling band, the more it's done, though I feel like it's out of fashion now, as with a lot of techniques Sim likes. Some people will throw the book down just as much as if Viktor had popped up with some finer points on gender. I'm in the middle - an eyeroll, an OK, and a let's give this the benefit of the doubt.
(Sim claimed in interviews and in the comic itself that this meeting was always planned, and while I'm never sure how much he revises his own backstory I can absolutely imagine "Cerebus talks to his creator" as part of the initial "300 issues" revelation in 1979)
I can see a lot of ways in which it works. Having comprehensively undermined The Judge, his in-story omniscient figure, Sim can't just introduce another, bigger Judge for a bigger Ascension. Cerebus has to actually either meet God, or meet someone who can credibly serve that function. Sim at this point doesn't actually believe in God - and Tarim, Cerebus' God, has become sort-of ridiculous in the context of being a part of so many narrative jokes at this point anyway. So meeting God would be less impressive than meeting "Dave" (and not meeting him will turn out to be very useful for Sim later on).
And besides, having Dave turn up links back to both the text pieces in Reads, not just the metafictional one. Sim is a credible divine stand-in because - unlike Steve Gerber or Grant Morrison or any other comics writer who'd played the metafictional card before - he truly does have sole control over Cerebus and his universe. Meeting your creation is the prerogative of the true creator, the self-publisher.
All that said, half of Dave's narrative function in the story is to deliver a huge amount of exposition, and big lumpy exposition in the closing chapters of your epic is a problem. The best parts are the parts that dig into the backstory of Cirin, because they serve as a sort of epilogue to the parts of Mothers & Daughters that are about the women *characters* rather than about 'women'. And they're one of the final times Sim writes something which actually feels cogent and well-observed about politics, in this case, the nature and risks of revolutionary movements. But there's also a supposedly big revelation about Cerebus, and why he didn't become a great leader, and it really feels unnecessary - answering questions that feel unimportant relative to the comic we've actually been reading all these years and change nothing much on a re-read. Like the parade of old faces in Flight, there's something a bit finicky about it, a fussy tying up of loose ends, to persuade us all that old material really was important.
The other half of the Dave section works much better - a look forward instead of back, as Cerebus petitions Dave to make Jaka love him, and Dave shows Cerebus how unhappy that will make everyone. These sequences are powerfully done, though as with any fantasy sequence their declared nature as fantasy blunts their effect a bit. But they are a kind of emotional ending for Mothers & Daughters as a whole, a novel which began with Cerebus spurred into murderous action by his obsession with Jaka, and ends with Cerebus given the chance to show growth as a person and choose not to pursue it.
So Mothers & Daughters ends with a conversation between 'father' and 'son', and the reader who wants to go no further with "Dave" or Viktor Davis or any of his ideas can lay the series down and forget the rest exists and think, wow, Cerebus, that was a weird comic, but when it was good it was REALLY good. The thing is, that's still true of the rest, but it will never be good in *that* way again.
March 12, 2013
A lot of people complain about this one... I liked it. I thought it *almost* made Reads worth it. It was an excellent conclusion to Mothers & Daughters and a nice way to tie everything together from earlier volumes. Sim has said that this serves as an end cap of sorts to the "main story line", and rereading it now, I can certainly see that. There was so much more going on in Book One than I ever could have picked up on. My only disappointment with this one was how the confrontation with Cirin fizzled out. (I wanted to see her beheaded or, well, something. Something more than what happened.)
And the Creator meeting Creation... although overdone these days, I thought it was fitting as Cerebus' second and final Ascension. He got real answers this time... although he couldn't appreciate them as such. But, hey, he's Cerebus. If he wised up, where would be the fun?
All in all, I have to say I truly enjoyed this one. My favorite volume is still Guys, but issue 200 was where I started reading, so it will always be a good memory for me.
And the Creator meeting Creation... although overdone these days, I thought it was fitting as Cerebus' second and final Ascension. He got real answers this time... although he couldn't appreciate them as such. But, hey, he's Cerebus. If he wised up, where would be the fun?
All in all, I have to say I truly enjoyed this one. My favorite volume is still Guys, but issue 200 was where I started reading, so it will always be a good memory for me.
September 13, 2015
And thus endeth the Mothers and Daugters portion of Cerebus' story.
I'm much more ambivalent about this book than I was a couple of years ago. I used to think it was brilliant but now I find more indulgent. On one hand, it explains a lot of the backstory of Cirin and her movement. On the other hand, having just finished Reads leaves one with a strange aftertaste of not wanting to like Dave Sim very much because of the asshatery.
I think the biggest problem I have is that the initial scope of Mothers and Daughters seemed more epic. And as conclusion to the story, it feels weak and unsatisfying. In fact, the whole story line feels a bit anemic even if you completely ignore the more misogynistic bits.
It's unfortunate because I feel this is the point where the series really jumps the shark. If you have ever read Cerebus before, I would go so far as to advise you to skip forward to the last book of the series ( The Last Day ) to give yourself some closure.
I'm much more ambivalent about this book than I was a couple of years ago. I used to think it was brilliant but now I find more indulgent. On one hand, it explains a lot of the backstory of Cirin and her movement. On the other hand, having just finished Reads leaves one with a strange aftertaste of not wanting to like Dave Sim very much because of the asshatery.
I think the biggest problem I have is that the initial scope of Mothers and Daughters seemed more epic. And as conclusion to the story, it feels weak and unsatisfying. In fact, the whole story line feels a bit anemic even if you completely ignore the more misogynistic bits.
It's unfortunate because I feel this is the point where the series really jumps the shark. If you have ever read Cerebus before, I would go so far as to advise you to skip forward to the last book of the series ( The Last Day ) to give yourself some closure.
June 13, 2008
A much easier read, wherein Dave Sim the author talks directly to Cerebus and explains most everything. Then he lets Cerebus decide his fate. Literally. Sim has said that at a certain point he let the "Cerebus" in his mind act the way he wanted to, and let the chips fall as they may. A short book that acts as a placeholder before the reset button and a change of scenery. Some emotional stuff in here, though, as Cerebus really does come to life.
January 7, 2009
To me this is the best Cerebus book. It has one of those totally crazy things where the artist actually interacts with the character within the context of the story. I can't really say too much without giving things away, but it helps you remember that you can't always get what you want because what you want isn't what's for you.
A friend of mine told me it was the most advanced comic he'd read on a lot a lot of levels, but found it too depressing to handle. So I guess that's a warning.
A friend of mine told me it was the most advanced comic he'd read on a lot a lot of levels, but found it too depressing to handle. So I guess that's a warning.
April 25, 2015
Even though the author shows himself in the comic, this is still pretty brilliant.
February 29, 2016
So here's the moment that Sim takes what was left of the fourth wall and sets about hammering it into a fine powder. No, Cerebus's world will never make any more sense than it does, right now, but on the other hand it all makes perfect sense, and that sense is: it's stuff that Dave Sim thought up. Over a long period of time. During which his ideas about comics, about narrative, and about reality changed quite a bit. And during which he kept producing the comic at a steady pace, twenty pages a month, regardless of what the hell he was doing or what the hell was going on in his head at the time.
Honestly, I probably prefer this, as a resolution, to the sort of internally-consistent, narratively-coherent afterthought that I'm sure Sim could have come up with in its place, had he wanted. Cerebus is a comic that Sim thought up and committed to 300 issues of, and by issue 200 he'd been all over the place with it, and to think of Cerebus as unified by any principle more significant than the fact that Cerebus was what Dave Sim would be doing until he hit issue 300 would be foolish.
And if you can accept this, and get over the disappointment that you're no longer allowed to think of Cerebus's story as an epic fantasy in the usual sense, you're primed for the next hundred issues. Sure, there will never be a conventional payoff to the rich narrative that sustained the comic for most of the last 200 issues. But you do get to look forward to a hundred more issues of Dave Sim creating the sort of comics art he feels like making at the time, and as an added bonus those issues will continue to be about some of the characters you've grown fond of. (by James)
Minds is the first ending of Cerebus - if you were reading the comic for the fantasy elements, for the story of Cerebus' rise to power and fall from grace in Iest that began in earnest with High Society and climaxed with his brutal one-on-one fight with Cirin in Reads, that finishes here.
Except, honestly, it sort of doesnt. Parts of those things - the disposition of power in Dave Sim's fantasy world; how Cerebus deals with authority and success - recur in future books. The broad arc of Cirin's matriarchy is left for later. We'll see many characters of note again at least once, even if this is it for most of the fan favourites. What people mean when they say that Cerebus ends with #200 - the end of Minds - is that this is the final time the book consistently feels like it did in its heyday, the commercial peak of Church And State. Cerebus has already proved it can break that template: this is the final time it returns to it.
Let's take it on those terms, then. Is it a good ending, does it fulfil the promise of High Society and Church And State II? Yes. No. It depends. Yes: Minds is a considerably friendlier book than Reads. Sim isn't exactly working to regain readers' trust (as will become even clearer, he doesn't care, and I don't think he could have made the good parts of Cerebus if he did.) But he's not trying to actively alienate them either. Minds is a beautifully told story, the Sim/Gerhard pairing on peak form - Gerhard's journey through the cosmos and his vision of ravaged Pluto is especially spectacular, but Sim is drawing his heart out too, from the desperate aardvarks clinging to what's left of their throne to the "what if" sequences exploring alternative futures for Cerebus if he married Jaka. There's much less formal experimentation, but what there is works superbly - the page in which the force of Cirin's telepathic denial literally breaks all other thought and speech bubbles is wonderful; the "injury to the eye" section one of the most disturbing point-of-view passages I've seen, even if it is set to a Pink Floyd song.
So it's possible to enjoy reading Minds in a way it wasn't possible to enjoy reading Reads - there's no text lumps, no whiplash shifts in pace, no brain-curdling gynophobia. And yet Reads happened. Viktor Davis exists, and he is, in some sense, writing this comic. The promise of Cerebus has always been that when you turn a page you might see something you've never seen done in comics before. But after Reads, you also know that when you turn a page you might see Sim trying to persuade you that you or your partner is a brain leech. It creates, shall we say, a barrier. Sim is on his best behaviour in Minds - he has a job to finish, and it's not until later books that the ideas presented in Reads bubble back up to the surface of Cerebus. But this isn't a comic you can read innocent of what Sim thinks any more (and that's the way he wanted it).
So it looks very good, and it feels a little bad, but how is it as an ending? At this point I have to spoil Minds - if you've come this far and you genuinely don't know who Cerebus meets on his Second Ascension, stop reading.
The bulk of Minds is a lengthy conversation between Cerebus and "Dave" aka Dave Sim, who has dropped his text-section identity now he's chatting to his creation rather than his readers. He doesn't wander up and shake Cerebus' paw: it's handled more elegantly, via thought bubbles intruding on Cerebus' own consciousness. Dave reveals a few cogent background details to Cerebus, tries to show him what'll happen if he gets what he thinks he wants, and comes close to abandoning him before dropping him back into the final third of the comic.
Your feelings about Minds as a satisfying ending - to Mothers & Daughters, to Cerebus so far, or even just to itself - are going to depend on how you view this kind of metafictional self-insert. Some people love it - probably a dwindling band, the more it's done, though I feel like it's out of fashion now, as with a lot of techniques Sim likes. Some people will throw the book down just as much as if Viktor had popped up with some finer points on gender. I'm in the middle - an eyeroll, an OK, and a let's give this the benefit of the doubt.
(Sim claimed in interviews and in the comic itself that this meeting was always planned, and while I'm never sure how much he revises his own backstory I can absolutely imagine "Cerebus talks to his creator" as part of the initial "300 issues" revelation in 1979)
I can see a lot of ways in which it works. Having comprehensively undermined The Judge, his in-story omniscient figure, Sim can't just introduce another, bigger Judge for a bigger Ascension. Cerebus has to actually either meet God, or meet someone who can credibly serve that function. Sim at this point doesn't actually believe in God - and Tarim, Cerebus' God, has become sort-of ridiculous in the context of being a part of so many narrative jokes at this point anyway. So meeting God would be less impressive than meeting "Dave" (and not meeting him will turn out to be very useful for Sim later on).
And besides, having Dave turn up links back to both the text pieces in Reads, not just the metafictional one. Sim is a credible divine stand-in because - unlike Steve Gerber or Grant Morrison or any other comics writer who'd played the metafictional card before - he truly does have sole control over Cerebus and his universe. Meeting your creation is the prerogative of the true creator, the self-publisher.
All that said, half of Dave's narrative function in the story is to deliver a huge amount of exposition, and big lumpy exposition in the closing chapters of your epic is a problem. The best parts are the parts that dig into the backstory of Cirin, because they serve as a sort of epilogue to the parts of Mothers & Daughters that are about the women *characters* rather than about 'women'. And they're one of the final times Sim writes something which actually feels cogent and well-observed about politics, in this case, the nature and risks of revolutionary movements. But there's also a supposedly big revelation about Cerebus, and why he didn't become a great leader, and it really feels unnecessary - answering questions that feel unimportant relative to the comic we've actually been reading all these years and change nothing much on a re-read. Like the parade of old faces in Flight, there's something a bit finicky about it, a fussy tying up of loose ends, to persuade us all that old material really was important.
The other half of the Dave section works much better - a look forward instead of back, as Cerebus petitions Dave to make Jaka love him, and Dave shows Cerebus how unhappy that will make everyone. These sequences are powerfully done, though as with any fantasy sequence their declared nature as fantasy blunts their effect a bit. But they are a kind of emotional ending for Mothers & Daughters as a whole, a novel which began with Cerebus spurred into murderous action by his obsession with Jaka, and ends with Cerebus given the chance to show growth as a person and choose not to pursue it.
So Mothers & Daughters ends with a conversation between 'father' and 'son', and the reader who wants to go no further with "Dave" or Viktor Davis or any of his ideas can lay the series down and forget the rest exists and think, wow, Cerebus, that was a weird comic, but when it was good it was REALLY good. The thing is, that's still true of the rest, but it will never be good in *that* way again.
Honestly, I probably prefer this, as a resolution, to the sort of internally-consistent, narratively-coherent afterthought that I'm sure Sim could have come up with in its place, had he wanted. Cerebus is a comic that Sim thought up and committed to 300 issues of, and by issue 200 he'd been all over the place with it, and to think of Cerebus as unified by any principle more significant than the fact that Cerebus was what Dave Sim would be doing until he hit issue 300 would be foolish.
And if you can accept this, and get over the disappointment that you're no longer allowed to think of Cerebus's story as an epic fantasy in the usual sense, you're primed for the next hundred issues. Sure, there will never be a conventional payoff to the rich narrative that sustained the comic for most of the last 200 issues. But you do get to look forward to a hundred more issues of Dave Sim creating the sort of comics art he feels like making at the time, and as an added bonus those issues will continue to be about some of the characters you've grown fond of. (by James)
Minds is the first ending of Cerebus - if you were reading the comic for the fantasy elements, for the story of Cerebus' rise to power and fall from grace in Iest that began in earnest with High Society and climaxed with his brutal one-on-one fight with Cirin in Reads, that finishes here.
Except, honestly, it sort of doesnt. Parts of those things - the disposition of power in Dave Sim's fantasy world; how Cerebus deals with authority and success - recur in future books. The broad arc of Cirin's matriarchy is left for later. We'll see many characters of note again at least once, even if this is it for most of the fan favourites. What people mean when they say that Cerebus ends with #200 - the end of Minds - is that this is the final time the book consistently feels like it did in its heyday, the commercial peak of Church And State. Cerebus has already proved it can break that template: this is the final time it returns to it.
Let's take it on those terms, then. Is it a good ending, does it fulfil the promise of High Society and Church And State II? Yes. No. It depends. Yes: Minds is a considerably friendlier book than Reads. Sim isn't exactly working to regain readers' trust (as will become even clearer, he doesn't care, and I don't think he could have made the good parts of Cerebus if he did.) But he's not trying to actively alienate them either. Minds is a beautifully told story, the Sim/Gerhard pairing on peak form - Gerhard's journey through the cosmos and his vision of ravaged Pluto is especially spectacular, but Sim is drawing his heart out too, from the desperate aardvarks clinging to what's left of their throne to the "what if" sequences exploring alternative futures for Cerebus if he married Jaka. There's much less formal experimentation, but what there is works superbly - the page in which the force of Cirin's telepathic denial literally breaks all other thought and speech bubbles is wonderful; the "injury to the eye" section one of the most disturbing point-of-view passages I've seen, even if it is set to a Pink Floyd song.
So it's possible to enjoy reading Minds in a way it wasn't possible to enjoy reading Reads - there's no text lumps, no whiplash shifts in pace, no brain-curdling gynophobia. And yet Reads happened. Viktor Davis exists, and he is, in some sense, writing this comic. The promise of Cerebus has always been that when you turn a page you might see something you've never seen done in comics before. But after Reads, you also know that when you turn a page you might see Sim trying to persuade you that you or your partner is a brain leech. It creates, shall we say, a barrier. Sim is on his best behaviour in Minds - he has a job to finish, and it's not until later books that the ideas presented in Reads bubble back up to the surface of Cerebus. But this isn't a comic you can read innocent of what Sim thinks any more (and that's the way he wanted it).
So it looks very good, and it feels a little bad, but how is it as an ending? At this point I have to spoil Minds - if you've come this far and you genuinely don't know who Cerebus meets on his Second Ascension, stop reading.
The bulk of Minds is a lengthy conversation between Cerebus and "Dave" aka Dave Sim, who has dropped his text-section identity now he's chatting to his creation rather than his readers. He doesn't wander up and shake Cerebus' paw: it's handled more elegantly, via thought bubbles intruding on Cerebus' own consciousness. Dave reveals a few cogent background details to Cerebus, tries to show him what'll happen if he gets what he thinks he wants, and comes close to abandoning him before dropping him back into the final third of the comic.
Your feelings about Minds as a satisfying ending - to Mothers & Daughters, to Cerebus so far, or even just to itself - are going to depend on how you view this kind of metafictional self-insert. Some people love it - probably a dwindling band, the more it's done, though I feel like it's out of fashion now, as with a lot of techniques Sim likes. Some people will throw the book down just as much as if Viktor had popped up with some finer points on gender. I'm in the middle - an eyeroll, an OK, and a let's give this the benefit of the doubt.
(Sim claimed in interviews and in the comic itself that this meeting was always planned, and while I'm never sure how much he revises his own backstory I can absolutely imagine "Cerebus talks to his creator" as part of the initial "300 issues" revelation in 1979)
I can see a lot of ways in which it works. Having comprehensively undermined The Judge, his in-story omniscient figure, Sim can't just introduce another, bigger Judge for a bigger Ascension. Cerebus has to actually either meet God, or meet someone who can credibly serve that function. Sim at this point doesn't actually believe in God - and Tarim, Cerebus' God, has become sort-of ridiculous in the context of being a part of so many narrative jokes at this point anyway. So meeting God would be less impressive than meeting "Dave" (and not meeting him will turn out to be very useful for Sim later on).
And besides, having Dave turn up links back to both the text pieces in Reads, not just the metafictional one. Sim is a credible divine stand-in because - unlike Steve Gerber or Grant Morrison or any other comics writer who'd played the metafictional card before - he truly does have sole control over Cerebus and his universe. Meeting your creation is the prerogative of the true creator, the self-publisher.
All that said, half of Dave's narrative function in the story is to deliver a huge amount of exposition, and big lumpy exposition in the closing chapters of your epic is a problem. The best parts are the parts that dig into the backstory of Cirin, because they serve as a sort of epilogue to the parts of Mothers & Daughters that are about the women *characters* rather than about 'women'. And they're one of the final times Sim writes something which actually feels cogent and well-observed about politics, in this case, the nature and risks of revolutionary movements. But there's also a supposedly big revelation about Cerebus, and why he didn't become a great leader, and it really feels unnecessary - answering questions that feel unimportant relative to the comic we've actually been reading all these years and change nothing much on a re-read. Like the parade of old faces in Flight, there's something a bit finicky about it, a fussy tying up of loose ends, to persuade us all that old material really was important.
The other half of the Dave section works much better - a look forward instead of back, as Cerebus petitions Dave to make Jaka love him, and Dave shows Cerebus how unhappy that will make everyone. These sequences are powerfully done, though as with any fantasy sequence their declared nature as fantasy blunts their effect a bit. But they are a kind of emotional ending for Mothers & Daughters as a whole, a novel which began with Cerebus spurred into murderous action by his obsession with Jaka, and ends with Cerebus given the chance to show growth as a person and choose not to pursue it.
So Mothers & Daughters ends with a conversation between 'father' and 'son', and the reader who wants to go no further with "Dave" or Viktor Davis or any of his ideas can lay the series down and forget the rest exists and think, wow, Cerebus, that was a weird comic, but when it was good it was REALLY good. The thing is, that's still true of the rest, but it will never be good in *that* way again.
March 29, 2018
“You are the baker and your life is the bread.”
Collecting issues 186-200 of the series, this volume is the fourth and last in the Mothers and Daughters arc. We are now two thirds of the way through the series and after this the pace will change considerably. The author has stated that this is the falling action of the series and the next 100 issues should be regarded as the denouement of the series.
The action takes place on a stroll around the solar system, and I found it interesting how the various celestial spheres (and the Van Allen belt) fit into the mythology of this world. Most of the plot is absorbed by the entrance of the ultimate celestial being, the author himself, Dave.
While meta and, some would say, silly, there is a precedent of authors meeting their creations in literature. Kurt Vonnegut meets Kilgore Trout at the end of Breakfast of Champions. Grant Morrison meets Animal Man at the end of his run on the series. Steve Gerber in Howard the Duck. Brian K. Vaughn in Ex Machina. And so on. So while not original, this part is well done. Dave claims to Cerebus that this is a religious experience on par with his own awakening after he was hospitalized for a LSD overdose. It was during this that he conceived the ideas, characters, and plot points which has unfolded over the last two hundred issues.
If anything this book demonstrates (or re-demonstrates) Cerebus’s ignorance. In his argument with Cirin we see that he doesn’t understand the religion that he became high pontiff of, and claims to believe deeply in, as he constantly mixes it up with various bits and pieces of other religions. In his conversation with Dave all he cares about is claiming Jaka for his own. He gains revelations about Cirin, her movement, and the nature of Aardvarks, but he isn’t interested. All the mysteries of his world were available and all he cares about was getting Jaka back.
In a sense he can’t be blamed, his dreams of conquest have been demonstrated to be absolutely unworkable and Cerebus finally accepts that. So his mind drifts to Jaka as it always does when his life fall apart. She is his safety net, his comfort animal, but he looks at her as the possession, not a person. You just can’t take the barbarian out of the man. But it is not to be, no matter how Cerebus shifts the goals and changes parameters, their relationship will be end in disaster and misery. Which is just as well, both characters, Jaka and Cerebus, are equally vapid. There just is not much to either.
I have to question what is Dave’s motivation in talking to his creation. Apart from wanting to be “meta”, I suspect the reason is the spur his character into a new direction in life. And for Cerebus to change, stubborn beast that he is, extraordinary methods are needed. He must be dragged to the ass end of the solar system, brutally stripped of all illusions, and abandoned in the barren wastes of Pluto for him to admit his faults and realize that he is a terrible person.
It is an odd ending for the action of a story. The big revelation, the resolution of conflict between two opposite forces boils down to the author himself popping up and putting everything to right. One would expect some great death scene, but it ends with Cirin now completely uninterested in Cerebus and our anti-hero adrift with no direction beyond self-indulgence.
April 19, 2026
Well, it's a competent ending to an unnecessary new arc. Once again the narrator doesn't seem to understand that regardless of whether something was intended to turn out as something else in the end, if it wasn't sufficiently prepared beforehand, it doesn't matter whatsoever and will feel like a completely arbitrary change when it occurs. The supposed symbolic importance of the throwaway characters and artifacts from the first issues? Completely arbitrary. Cerebus being a hermaphrodite? Completely arbitrary. Even Cerebus' love for Jaka is arbitrary, to reiterate my point made concerning Jaka's Story, which kind of is supported here by the excellent accounts of her and Cerebus' possible futures (Dave being Cerebus' creator could have given him a satisfying life with Jaka of course, it's just that Cerebus didn't love her).
In any case, this is decent, the whole Mothers and Daughters storyline is, but not as essential as everything before it. Mind you, I skipped all of the pure textual parts before and after every issue and only concentrated on the main story (which is how you're supposed to read the thing if you don't want to get irritated, otherwise it becomes close to outsider art). I read in one of the reviews here that this story arc could have been and should have been explicated until the final 300th issue and I agree. The main reason I can't give this five stars is not only the convoluted nature of it but also that more than half of the information is presented as exposition. Cirin's Story alone could have filled another wonderful and nuanced phonebook. Dave's conversation with Cerebus could have been presented much differently as well. Why did this need to be wrapped up quickly, for what kind of amazing new future stories, if it was known that there were still 100 issues left? I'll see, I suppose. And I'm not looking forward to that.
In any case, this is decent, the whole Mothers and Daughters storyline is, but not as essential as everything before it. Mind you, I skipped all of the pure textual parts before and after every issue and only concentrated on the main story (which is how you're supposed to read the thing if you don't want to get irritated, otherwise it becomes close to outsider art). I read in one of the reviews here that this story arc could have been and should have been explicated until the final 300th issue and I agree. The main reason I can't give this five stars is not only the convoluted nature of it but also that more than half of the information is presented as exposition. Cirin's Story alone could have filled another wonderful and nuanced phonebook. Dave's conversation with Cerebus could have been presented much differently as well. Why did this need to be wrapped up quickly, for what kind of amazing new future stories, if it was known that there were still 100 issues left? I'll see, I suppose. And I'm not looking forward to that.
December 1, 2025
The first half is a straightforward look into the second ascension. Cirin and Cerebus argue about whose religion is right for a while, Cerebus calls himself slurs for having horny thoughts about men, and then...
The second half is mostly Dave Sim talking to his creation, externalizing himself into the comic as "Dave" and pouring his heart out to the cartoon aardvark he's been writing for 200 issues. There's a lot of discussion of cosmology and metaphor. It ends on a Looney Tunes gag.
For the most part Cerebus is just here to be talked to through internal monologue, but I did like one turn of phrase Dave deploys in his dialogue with his creation: "You are the baker; your life is the bread." Despite his own hang-ups - which are, mercifully, not as prominent here as in Reads - Dave understands that actions have consequences. He is not blind to his own flaws. He knows he has been an asshole. And he feels like he can't help it.
The second half is mostly Dave Sim talking to his creation, externalizing himself into the comic as "Dave" and pouring his heart out to the cartoon aardvark he's been writing for 200 issues. There's a lot of discussion of cosmology and metaphor. It ends on a Looney Tunes gag.
For the most part Cerebus is just here to be talked to through internal monologue, but I did like one turn of phrase Dave deploys in his dialogue with his creation: "You are the baker; your life is the bread." Despite his own hang-ups - which are, mercifully, not as prominent here as in Reads - Dave understands that actions have consequences. He is not blind to his own flaws. He knows he has been an asshole. And he feels like he can't help it.
July 10, 2020
If you've made it past Reads, and not lost the will to live or developed the urge to eat bricks, then I'd definitely suggest sticking it out until the end of Mothers and Daughters. Minds is much better written and more interesting story than the preceding volume and feels like somewhat of a return to form for the writer and Artist. The illustration and inking are excellent and Cerebus discussion with his creator is certainly an uncanny peak for the series. It provides a fitting end although in some respects it feels a little like an anti-climax. It brings home the idea that life is about the journey and not the destination. As such, it feels like a natural stopping point.
I will be continuing to read the last volumes in the Cerebus Saga but I've more or less accepted the best is certainly behind me now.
I will be continuing to read the last volumes in the Cerebus Saga but I've more or less accepted the best is certainly behind me now.
June 8, 2017
We finally get back to graphical storytelling after the very text-heavy last volume. Not very much happens, though. The most interesting part is the backstory of how the Cirinist society developed into the matriarchal society it became. It does at least seem plausibly possible under the circumstances: all the men of certain ages had been systematically killed by an occupying army. When they left, the women formed a new society with new rules.
Other than that bit of story, the best thing continues to be the inventive lettering and layouts.
Other than that bit of story, the best thing continues to be the inventive lettering and layouts.
May 17, 2022
Makes up (as best it can) for the uncanny shit show that was the last volume, by making it so meta that I’m sure Grant Morrison is touching themselves somewhere reading it. Art is gorgeous, and Dave Sim (mostly) keeps the controversial opinions to himself, thank fuck. As an ending of sorts it’s underwhelming, but I get it.
November 11, 2025
My favourite of the "metaphysical conversation" segments in the series. It's nice to see someone other than Cerebus having a talk with a higher power, and Dave is a far more interesting god figure than the Judge was. Revelations about Cirin are great, and as "the end" of the story I think things round out nicely. More great art... again.
October 30, 2026
I finished Cerebus, Vol. 10: Minds and felt like I'd been lectured, entertained, and gently insulted all at once. Sim, Dave has a real talent for making you feel called out without feeling attacked. It gets a little smug now and then. Recommend for readers who can take a joke at their own expense, skip if you're touchy.
October 29, 2018
Cerebus' epiphany. At this point the plot got to weird to describe it, it's certainly not how anybody would have expected 'Mothers & Daughters' to end. Kudos to Sim, I guess.
April 9, 2019
Fantastic conclusion to the Mothers & Daughters story arc.
September 11, 2011
Once again I have a problem between judging this on its own vs as the climax of a larger story. As a climax of the Mothers & Daughers story (making up this and the previous 3 volumes), it's pretty disappointing. Sim claims in the intro that it will clear up all the loose ends, but really it only clears up a few. Going back and reading the series up to this point made me realize just how few things are seriously resolved/explained here. It was like at the beginning of Mothers & Daughers he threw everything that had happened in the series thus far into a funnel, but then realized it was all coming out of the narrow end really slowly and just cut that shit off when only maybe a third of it had made it through. Don't bring up all these mysteries, then suddenly ignore them and expect that a long fight between Cirin and Cerebus and a talk with the creator is going to be a reasonable/satisfying climax. Also if Sim is the deity of the Cerebus universe (not Tarim/Terim), then all of the weird theological mysteries that have come before don't really make ANY sense.
I also have a lot of issues with the meeting between Cerebus and Sim. Sim spends most of the time berating Cerebus for his past (and future) behavior and saying how ridiculous it is for him to hold his writer responsible for his actions. Ok, regardless of whether or not you are a determinist in real life, I think we can all agree that fictional characters on a page do NOT have free choice. It's great that you think the characters write themselves and all, but holding them responsible for their own actions is a little ridiculous. If you wanted Cerebus to change and become a better person/aardvark, you probably should have created a character with a greater capacity for change. The written page is not a microcosm of the universe. You're still in the driver seat, Dave. Not your fictional character.
That said, I do find the meeting between the two to be kinda charming. The flashbacks are extremely well done. I like the amusingly nonsensical theological arguments Cerebus and Cirin have. Most of all, I love the art. This is visually the most arresting of all the volumes. Amidst all the talking and flashbacks, we're slowly moving through the solar system and it makes for some pretty powerful visual moments. My personal favorite is the trip through Jupiter's atmosphere when Cerebus thinks he's in hell, and the images do seem straight out of the Inferno (I especially love when he hits the nighttime side and all he can see is lightning everywhere). Sim and (especially) Gerhard go nuts here. And as always, Sim brings numerous, novel layout and story-telling techniques.
I remember being massively disappointed by this when I first read it years ago, and as a climax to the Cerebus saga it is pretty disappointing. But this time I was able to at least enjoy it for what it is.
P.S. Reading this made me realize how much more ambitious in a literary sense Dave got as the series progressed, especially starting around Jaka's Story. But I think that the series got worse as a result. He seemed to get so caught up in making a grand, literary statement that he lost sight of and neglected the qualities that made Cerebus a good series in the first place. Sigh.
I also have a lot of issues with the meeting between Cerebus and Sim. Sim spends most of the time berating Cerebus for his past (and future) behavior and saying how ridiculous it is for him to hold his writer responsible for his actions. Ok, regardless of whether or not you are a determinist in real life, I think we can all agree that fictional characters on a page do NOT have free choice. It's great that you think the characters write themselves and all, but holding them responsible for their own actions is a little ridiculous. If you wanted Cerebus to change and become a better person/aardvark, you probably should have created a character with a greater capacity for change. The written page is not a microcosm of the universe. You're still in the driver seat, Dave. Not your fictional character.
That said, I do find the meeting between the two to be kinda charming. The flashbacks are extremely well done. I like the amusingly nonsensical theological arguments Cerebus and Cirin have. Most of all, I love the art. This is visually the most arresting of all the volumes. Amidst all the talking and flashbacks, we're slowly moving through the solar system and it makes for some pretty powerful visual moments. My personal favorite is the trip through Jupiter's atmosphere when Cerebus thinks he's in hell, and the images do seem straight out of the Inferno (I especially love when he hits the nighttime side and all he can see is lightning everywhere). Sim and (especially) Gerhard go nuts here. And as always, Sim brings numerous, novel layout and story-telling techniques.
I remember being massively disappointed by this when I first read it years ago, and as a climax to the Cerebus saga it is pretty disappointing. But this time I was able to at least enjoy it for what it is.
P.S. Reading this made me realize how much more ambitious in a literary sense Dave got as the series progressed, especially starting around Jaka's Story. But I think that the series got worse as a result. He seemed to get so caught up in making a grand, literary statement that he lost sight of and neglected the qualities that made Cerebus a good series in the first place. Sigh.
March 4, 2013
Remember that climax I referred to in the last review of book #7? Yeah. Here we are. Honestly, this is a weak ending of everything we've been leading up to.
That being said, stop. Stop right here. Go no farther and just pretend that no other books were written after this one. Because let me tell you, you don't want to go any further. This is the last glimmer of anything interesting before the story descends into nothingness.
This is the last hint of any sort of cohesive story for the character of Cerebus. And there isn't too much of that either. The beginning half is just long, drawn out fight scenes, and the rest is simply exposition on the behalf of the writer.
I am not a literal reader. I like to see symbolism and I like to see authors and writers have well-rounded and interesting characters. Sometimes that means that characters have offensive or bad philosophies or views on things. I do not necessarily attribute those onto the author.
That being said, I cannot do that here. When Dave Sim puts himself into the narrative of the story and uses that character to spout philosophy and misogynistic rants, I am left with little recourse then to believe that is what the author believes in. And it lowers my opinion of him...by a lot.
So trust me when I say, stop reading the series here. You'll thank me.
That being said, stop. Stop right here. Go no farther and just pretend that no other books were written after this one. Because let me tell you, you don't want to go any further. This is the last glimmer of anything interesting before the story descends into nothingness.
This is the last hint of any sort of cohesive story for the character of Cerebus. And there isn't too much of that either. The beginning half is just long, drawn out fight scenes, and the rest is simply exposition on the behalf of the writer.
I am not a literal reader. I like to see symbolism and I like to see authors and writers have well-rounded and interesting characters. Sometimes that means that characters have offensive or bad philosophies or views on things. I do not necessarily attribute those onto the author.
That being said, I cannot do that here. When Dave Sim puts himself into the narrative of the story and uses that character to spout philosophy and misogynistic rants, I am left with little recourse then to believe that is what the author believes in. And it lowers my opinion of him...by a lot.
So trust me when I say, stop reading the series here. You'll thank me.
January 11, 2013
This reads better as a book than it did in individual issues, but it is still uneven. The pacing is sometimes off, as Sim get bogged down in extensive backstory/exposition/infodumping. All this is perhaps necessary, but it also does not speak to the strengths of comics as a medium. That said, it's fascinating finally to get Sim providing some sort of rationalization for much of what went before--even if it creaks at the seams a bit. Most interesting is that in this volume Sim provides an idea of what Cirin's state was intended to be, and it seems almost utopian in nature. We have a big reveal about Cirin that I recall as quite a surprise on first reading this in serial form, but it's also very much in keeping with Sim's interest in doublings. The protracted sequence of Cerebus talking to Dave participates in a metafictive conceit that is not among my favourite literary devices, but it is also a remarkable sequence in terms of how much it clarifies just what an anti-hero (which is about as politely as one can put it) Cerebus is. That his nature is inherently vicious, regardless of what Dave might change about his world, is central to understanding the series overall. And of course, there's lots of great cartooning. Probably 3.5 stars, is that were possible.
November 20, 2014
This collected volume of the Cerebus comic is not for the uninitiated. Collecting as it does issues from the late 100s, it requires a knowledge of a large majority of the previously published issues or volumes. Cerebus itself is not necessarily enjoyable by those without some familiarity with its peer comics, fantasy novels by Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, the Marx brothers' films, and the writings and lives of Oscar Wilde, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards, to enumerate only some of its influences.
Minds is much more traditional in its presentation than the previous volume, although it continues Sim's idiosyncratic view of the relation between creator and creation. I liked it a lot--especially the points where Cerebus tries to come to grips with the fact that he is talking to "God." Call it meta-fiction, call it jacking off--it's unreal and poignant at the same time. Even if you think it doesn't work, you at least have to admire Sim for his audacity.
New to Cerebus? Don't start here. Find the first eponymous phone book and try that. It gets both better and worse after that, but this is truly one of those cases where you have to take the good with the bad.
Minds is much more traditional in its presentation than the previous volume, although it continues Sim's idiosyncratic view of the relation between creator and creation. I liked it a lot--especially the points where Cerebus tries to come to grips with the fact that he is talking to "God." Call it meta-fiction, call it jacking off--it's unreal and poignant at the same time. Even if you think it doesn't work, you at least have to admire Sim for his audacity.
New to Cerebus? Don't start here. Find the first eponymous phone book and try that. It gets both better and worse after that, but this is truly one of those cases where you have to take the good with the bad.
December 16, 2007
In which this "story" that stopped being a story ages ago peters out into author Dave Sim appearing in the comic to tell Cerebus he's his god, and created him, and yadda yadda yadda. This gimmick is so old and tired it needs a walker and a hearing aid. Meanwhile, the actual individual comic books are stuffed with Sim's ongoing lectures about self-publishing comics, advertisements for conventions and other comics, and on and on, to the point where whatever Cerebus is, it feels like a side-project to whatever else Sim is on about. There's also plenty of letters about his anti-women rant back in issue 186, which Sim answers smugly, without hearing anything, reconsidering anything, or, really, thinking.
In the world before the internet, and blogs, and etc., this kind of view into the mind of a troubled artist with terrible ideas as he swirls ever faster around the drain of total irrelevance was somewhat novel. So I guess that's an interesting thought. Which means there's something to be said for this thing. Maybe?
In the world before the internet, and blogs, and etc., this kind of view into the mind of a troubled artist with terrible ideas as he swirls ever faster around the drain of total irrelevance was somewhat novel. So I guess that's an interesting thought. Which means there's something to be said for this thing. Maybe?
August 4, 2013
After Reads I figured anything in the Cerebus series would be better and I was right, but not by much. This book continues to plod along at a maddeningly slow pace, almost nothing happens in this book until about the last quarter and then it gets interesting as it fill in some of the gaps from the very first Cerebus collection and does make me want to go back and read that as it reminded me why I got into the series in the first place, something I feel I need after reading Melmoth, Flight, Women, Reads and Minds. At this point I am thankful that there is only a few books left in the series.
August 24, 2009
Although I didn't expect it after the catastrophic experience of the last volume "Reads", I did actually enjoy this one. The story is well-written, well-paced and fun to read, and the artwork just rocks. Cerebus (the comic) is getting back on track while Cerebus (the character) is losing it and Dave Sim (the author) is drifting into weirdom (as witnessed by the letter pages to the following volumes). Well, just never let the author interfere with a good story, I guess...
March 23, 2007
A dramatic improvement! Still very little plot, but finally Sims is doing something with his book - Cerebus is lost in either space or his mind, struggling with doubt, memories, and emotion. The art is top notch, and the content makes you think. It reminds you that , when he's not insane, Sims is brilliant.
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