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Post by String on Aug 10, 2021 14:01:17 GMT -5
I read all of Sudden Moves. That’s the first arc in Going Home. I remember the first two or three issues but the rest of it seemed totally new to me. And I’ve started the second arc. Fall and the River. This is the arc with F. Scott Fitzgerald. I remembered that Cerebus and Jaka are on a boat with F. Scott Fitzgerald but beyond that, none of the details are familiar. I was somewhat familiar with Fitzgerald when these issues first came out. I had read Gatsby more than once and I’d read The Beautiful and the Damned. I’m sure I was a little familiar with the stories of Scott and Zelda frolicking through the twenties. He was friends with Hemingway. Zelda ended her days in an institution. The Cliff Notes version. Since then I’ve read a lot more. I saw the movie version of Tender Is the Night. I was fascinated with Zelda for a while and I read a biography about her. I bought a book with her complete writings which includes a number of short stories, articles and a play. And also her novel Save Me the Waltz. Which I think is better than anything I’ve read by F. Scott. So I’m definitely getting a lot more out of Fall and the River than I did twenty years ago. Alright then, I didn't know that Fitz appears later on but it does make me wonder, has anyone ever counted how many celebrity caricatures/parodies there are throughout the run? It has to be quite the amount I would think. For example, doesn't the Three Stooges appear at some later point too? I've always been partial for Fitz. Any of you recall how, in high school, in English class, you'd have a list of novels that you'd have to read and then discuss or write a thesis essay about, etc? And you'd wait till the week before any of that stuff was due to try and read the book (or at least hunt down a Cliff Notes version of it)? Well, I did that for Gatsby, waited till the weekend before anything was due on it to try and read it. Quite surprised by how much I actually enjoyed it, read the entire book that weekend. And got good grades on the resulting class work about it.
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Post by String on Aug 10, 2021 14:11:31 GMT -5
Bran's actions here are baffling to me, especially his last act. Why do that? Thrunk shows up as the False Pope and Bran's reaction is...that. Was he afraid the people had lost faith in Cerebus? (and so quickly too!) Had he lost faith as well? I keep thinking that, that his reaction was a sign of the weakness of his faith in the Earth-Pig Born especially in the face of a giant stone fist punching through the hotel wall. This gets explained later on, implicitly. Thrunk seemed to be fulfilling a prophecy that Bran had expected Cerebus to. This resulted in a massive loss of faith combined with a feeling of having backed the wrong person, and he could not tolerate the emotional conflict. That's an oddity in this book. There were hints that in his youth, Cerebus had been sexually involved with women (not to mention the story which introduced Jaka), but apparently not because … he only believed in sex after marriage? Yeah, I thought it must've been something akin to losing faith for him. I've liked Bran more in his supporting role as a motivator for Cerebus, far more than Astoria seems to be viewed as. Astoria's goals are always political, a facet that Cerebus really doesn't care about in so much as how it affects his ability to command, conquer, and make money. Bran's goals aligned more smoothly with Cerebus' main interests which is why Bran always seemed to have a larger influence such as when he convinced Cerebus to run for PM and expanded his reach as Pope, Cerebus wants to believe in Bran more than Astoria. Still, his final scene remains quite shocking and vivid. There may be something to his belief in sex only after marriage, let's face it, he quickly married himself to Astoria before raping her so as to add some form of legitimacy to the crime. But I think Sims may have also introduced this newly acquired taste so he could simply have another facet of the supposed piety of religious leaders to mock and parody. For we have quite a few scenes of Sophia voicing her uneasiness about playing perverted games with the Pope.
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Post by String on Aug 10, 2021 14:15:58 GMT -5
A little ways into Jaka's Story and have no problem with the text passages so far, in fact, I like Sims' prose style.
However, the scenes where Cerebus arrives at Jaka's apartment, she asks (makes) him stay there with her and Rick. Cerebus' actions & reactions, staying there in the home of the woman you love and her husband, sadly, I know exactly, exactly, how that feels and man, it is a dark emotional place to dwell in. Sims nailed it.
I had to put the book down for a few days....
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 10, 2021 18:01:35 GMT -5
I did not intend to read Going Home so fast.
I’m about halfway through the Ham Earnestway segment. Coupled with Sim’s notes about the Hemingways I find it very compelling and find myself curious about what happens next. So I’ve only got about eight issues to go before I’m done with Going Home.
I keep thinking that Mary Hemingway sounds very unpleasant. But then I remember that I know very little about her outside of Sim’s version. So I’m going to reserve my first impressions as I wait to study something with a little more objectivity.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 10, 2021 19:51:49 GMT -5
(By which, I mean ANY objectivity.)
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 11, 2021 9:07:07 GMT -5
I’m still missing two issues of Cerebus. 262 and 265. I ordered them but they haven’t arrived. I had originally intended to wait until they got here before starting the third arc of Going Home but I started anyway, figuring I would read them slowly ... and then I didn’t.
So I’m up to 258 and trying to restrict myself to one issue a day and hoping that the missing issues arrive on Friday as predicted.
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Post by brutalis on Aug 11, 2021 10:33:05 GMT -5
Finished the last 4 issues of High Society last night. This is where fans began to join the grumpy Aardvark adventure in droves if memory serves me. Sim had found his rhythm, style and "voice" now which all helped push the comic from a fan parody into a uniquely witty, humorous analysis of life and political commentary of the world.
Sim has reached his synergy combining the writer, artist and letterer into a cohesive whole producing an individualistic comic book that stands out from the crowd. And it showed as new readers embraced the comic. A new energy seems to propel Sim's creativity now with idea's and concepts and thoughts flowing rapidly.
Cerebus is hilarious coming into Iest and bewildered in his new found popularity and growing wealth of city life. Watching our little gray schemer adapting to society, cleanliness, fawning opportunists, a magical hotel elf, aspiring politicians and the inevitable presence of Moon Roach, Elrod, Julius, the unrecognizable Bran, his new compatriot in larceny Astoria (for her own special reasons) and the return of Jaka makes for a very full story.
Sim the writer has a new confidence with his cast of Moronic characters and adeptly provides each their unique cadence and tone while building the plotting and scheming going on around them. Cerebus adapts rather quickly to his new venture evolving into a complex character in his frustration (can never find a good fight when he needs one) and desires as his wealth is suddenly not something he had to aspire to but instead must learn how to hold onto while gaining even more.
There are downright laugh out loud moments right beside subtler pokes and jabs. It is wildly fun watching Julius bursting through scenes while Cerebus is the only one who is seemingly capable of understanding and/or dealing with the cigar chomping scene chewing megalomaniac. Even his ex- wife Astoria is not quite capable of confronting and understanding Julius. Guess it takes one to know one as Cerebus/Julius are in a class/world all their own.
An aside on artist/letterer Sim. His choice for limited backgrounds/detailed designs as necessary only places the emphasis upon the written words. You need to READ Cetebus and not just look at it. The use of black and white combined with evolving panel design and layouts helps the lettering truly POP on the pages.
Possibly more thoughts later
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 11, 2021 11:30:52 GMT -5
Initial thoughts on Reads:
Sim is clearly modeling Victor Reid on himself, a writer who leapt, overnight, from obscurity to fame (much to his own discomfort), and who looks to conspiracy theories to explain why his girlfriend left him.
And yet, Victor Davis will be the one who ultimately steps off the page to speak to us as the author.
And neither will truly align with Sim's very complicated feelings about men and women.
In the introduction to this volume, Sim complains that, "it is one view that I do this intentionally--that it is just in my nature to be contrary to the accepted consensus on any given subject," and that is really the only view that explains Victor Davis, when Sim's depiction of Cerebus and Jakka (at the very least) both before this volume and after tells a very different story of men and women.
Of course, Jakka is an ideal that resides outside of the competing views of feminism in Cerebus' world, but she is also independent, empowered, and not ruled by any man.
So yeah, I think Sim enjoys provoking folks by attacking accepted norms and that he also has no idea what he really believes.
In the end, as I make my way through Reads this time, my goal is not to defend Sim, but rather to construct a defense of Cerebus as a whole. Because there is no way this work has been misogynistic propaganda all along, nor is it afterward in Going Home.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 11, 2021 12:09:06 GMT -5
In the end, as I make my way through Reads this time, my goal is not to defend Sim, but rather to construct a defense of Cerebus as a whole. Because there is no way this work has been misogynistic propaganda all along, nor is it afterward in Going Home. THANK YOU!
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 11, 2021 18:24:29 GMT -5
Well. Now he’s really done it. In the notes later in Form and Void, Sim starts dismissing Gertrude Stein.
Look, Dave. It’s fine that you don’t understand Gertrude Stein. Or Picasso. Or so many other things.
But do you have to be proud of yourself that you can critique them with all the wit and insight of an eighth-grader?
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 13, 2021 9:23:42 GMT -5
I finished Going Home last night.
I won’t give anything away.
However. I will say that a major plot point hinges on one of the most inauthentic moments in the whole 300-issue series. A major character acts in a manner that is unbelievably out of character just to support Sim’s gender philosophy.
I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
Also the last few issues have a Gertrude Stein caricature that is without a doubt Sim’s worst depiction of a real person. He shouldn’t have used her if he disliked her so much that he couldn’t bring himself to learn enough about her to write something interesting.
One of WC Fields’ movies has a Stein parody that I find hilarious despite how much I like her. Or maybe because of how much I like her.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Aug 13, 2021 11:49:04 GMT -5
In the introduction to this volume, Sim complains that, "it is one view that I do this intentionally--that it is just in my nature to be contrary to the accepted consensus on any given subject," and that is really the only view that explains Victor Davis, when Sim's depiction of Cerebus and Jakka (at the very least) both before this volume and after tells a very different story of men and women. Of course, Jakka is an ideal that resides outside of the competing views of feminism in Cerebus' world, but she is also independent, empowered, and not ruled by any man. So yeah, I think Sim enjoys provoking folks by attacking accepted norms and that he also has no idea what he really believes. In the end, as I make my way through Reads this time, my goal is not to defend Sim, but rather to construct a defense of Cerebus as a whole. Because there is no way this work has been misogynistic propaganda all along, nor is it afterward in Going Home. Of course one of the problems is that Sim himself, in interview, retroactively interprets past stories to be misogynistic propaganda all along … so either he's still adolescently contrarian, or he's a poor interpreter of his own stories, or else he was spectacularly poor at communicating his misogynistic beliefs early on.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 13, 2021 13:40:55 GMT -5
In the introduction to this volume, Sim complains that, "it is one view that I do this intentionally--that it is just in my nature to be contrary to the accepted consensus on any given subject," and that is really the only view that explains Victor Davis, when Sim's depiction of Cerebus and Jakka (at the very least) both before this volume and after tells a very different story of men and women. Of course, Jakka is an ideal that resides outside of the competing views of feminism in Cerebus' world, but she is also independent, empowered, and not ruled by any man. So yeah, I think Sim enjoys provoking folks by attacking accepted norms and that he also has no idea what he really believes. In the end, as I make my way through Reads this time, my goal is not to defend Sim, but rather to construct a defense of Cerebus as a whole. Because there is no way this work has been misogynistic propaganda all along, nor is it afterward in Going Home. Of course one of the problems is that Sim himself, in interview, retroactively interprets past stories to be misogynistic propaganda all along … Absolutely. The way he depicts Jaka in later interviews, for example, makes no sense at all. In Jaka's story, to name just one story arc, she's the only adult in the household; responsible, emotionally mature, hard-working, selfless even. Not at all the pampered, selfish princess Dave makes her out to be (retroactively). I think he actually believes himself in those interviews, perhaps subconsciously rewriting the past to suit his current opinions.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 21, 2021 18:56:33 GMT -5
I finally put Going Home back in the box and took out all the Latter Days issues.
I’ll probably start Latter Days soon. Maybe tonight.
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Post by Hoosier X on Aug 23, 2021 23:09:54 GMT -5
I’m not reading Latter Days very quickly.
The Three Stooges parts are very funny.
But I’ve run into couple of walls of text that are The Booke of Rick and I stop and put it down for a few days.
I think it’s supposed to be awful.
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