SIGNALS. 07: ... but then came out! 
The aNobii I saw the library a couple of readers ...
For those not familiar (remember my article below is very very old stuff. One caveat: the parties on the various blocks of stories contain spoilers. The rest of the article, opening and closing may be considered virtually spoiler- free ... so then I did not come to crash):
by the sword the miter: life, death and miracles of an aardvark (and its authors) A recommended
Ntare something we hold dear it ends ever (unless it is not Alan Moore) to take with those who are listening every intention to get closer just a mile from the "what" recounted: the excitement, the desire to cover every aspect of what we tried, the illusion that the experience for others what was for us, all these things conspire to make us more like the apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey in which human beings (this feature is supposed to psychomotor higher). The excitement is an ugly beast. All this to justify myself, to find an excuse that softens the vivisection that I am forced to do in talking about Cerebus and its history, there was no other way: o Cerebus told you so, or when you would have found as you're listening to someone who remembers episodes which were not present.
THE AUTHOR. "Dave Sim was born in Hamilton, Ontario and moved to Kitchener two years to reunite with his family. Since then he has undertaken a number of unsavory practices including marriage and strip-chess. "This is what Dave Sim says of himself in the book containing the first 25 episodes of Cerebus. We may add that since he embarked on the adventure of Cerebus has never ceased to plan / implement and) Machiavellian promotional campaigns that see him move continuously in all countries where English is spoken (for now only in the northern hemisphere) . His specialty: to support copyright in the comics and have their picture taken with beautiful girls whenever he can. His hobbies include desecration of the American comicdon.
co-author. "Gerhard was born in Edmonton. He has a boat and a cat. "More or less the middle of Church & State
Gerhard joined in the draw Cerebus Dave Sim: a pencil to the other machines? Too easy: Dave continued to draw the characters, Gerhard taken to fresco backgrounds, with the result that valuable since there are more dirty fingers black when you read Cerebus.
the beginning. "He came into our city at dawn ... Although it would later be recognized as the best fighter who had passed through our gates, at that time was just a curiosity ... You see, only five had high palms, had a prominent snout, a long tail and was covered with short gray hair ... was, in short ... Cerebus the aardvark. "With these words
Cerebus quietly debuted in 1977. Cerebus is an aardvark, which is an aardvark, which is a species of ants is the only (or most) of the anthropomorphic animal story, and is the only (or almost) to be wired (the "or so" was due to the fact Cerebus that recently discovered that there are two other aardvark). As reported in an article in the first issue of Cerebus Companion
, a magazine devoted exclusively to criticism of him, the first adventures of our hero turn out to be obtained by shaking a cocktail shaker in a Howard the Duck, Conan the Barbarian and the cartoons from Warner Bros. But the same Dave Sim, in an interview in 1982, declared that after 15 issues he knew that Cerebus would shy away from simple parody of the sword & sorcery. But nothing allowed to foresee what happened next.
Cerebus No 1 / n. 25. The first 25 issues of Cerebus are therefore a parodic review of all the clichés of heroic fantasy: wizards, treasures, heroes, monsters and magic, nothing is missing. Secondary characters appear destined to rise over time to role of actors: the irascible Red Sophia, talkative Elrod the Albino, the Marxist Lord Julius (Groucho Marx in the sense of), the sweet Jaka, and some of the first, infinite personality of Artemis. Without these, and others that will be added along the way, would not be Cerebus Cerebus. The sign, still very immature, Dave Sim weigh down the lightness of these episodes, which often still lack a rigorous serialism time. However, the strong characterization of the characters and hilarious situations presented is able to polarize our attention, making us gloss over the uncertainties of the stroke and leaving predict that exponential aging of the product that would come shortly thereafter. Among the memorable episodes we remember what set the "school for young girls with" directed by Charles X Claremont or the epic clash between the terrible and the even more horrible Woman-Thing Man-Thing, a clash that concludes this first block of stories.
HIGH SOCIETY n.26 / No 50. With
High Society our little gray friend is going to climb to fame: the background of the incredible Regency Hotel Cerebus is going to become nothing less than the Prime Minister of Iest! This parody politics (which some have been able to bring to the parable of President Nixon) is the first step of Sim out of pure fantasy: he created the world is put at the bottom of the Cerebus live theater where his adventure electoral magic and supernatural acquire licenses of normality, so that we can not find anything strange in the fact that Cerebus will discuss projects with the electoral playing crocquet elf luminescent haunts the Regency. They appear as other important supporting roles, for example, Astoria, intriguing figure of a woman who fights with every means to impose their own ideas. Sim scored with Astoria, with its subsequent evolution, one of the living creatures that ever inhabited the world in two dimensions. Of course, a personality so strong he could not end up clashing with the infinite selfishness of Cerebus! But fate is that political power not last into the paws nail our hero, only a flock of sheep would consent to squeeze as would be the aardvark. And among the many things that make men like sheep there is one that has particular weight on.
CHURCH & STATE I and II No 52 / No 111. The following block of episodes Cerebus it retries its rise to power, Pope improvising the first half narrates the events that brought him to the papal throne, the second recounts his (mis) government on the poor temporal and spiritual believers and its metaphysical ascent learn where the moon by the referee, that the prophecy about her fate: "You will live for a few more years ... will die alone, Illacrimo and unloved by anyone. " Among the episodes you can not remember the marriage contract to be drunk with Red Sophia, the advent of the Secret Sacred Wars (Sacred Secret Wars), the "fling" more of an innocent person (child or old) from the roof of edoc his hotel so the believers and the fantastic, unique "monologue" with the Man in the Moon (only the latter manages to speak in the absence of air). No
JAKA'S STORY 114 / n. 136. Returning to the mainland Cerebus learns that what he had said the Man in the Moon was true that the time period set for the end of the world had passed, nothing had happened and all its followers had deserted him. In addition, the driving forces of matriarchy Cirin had invaded and occupied the whole of Lower Feld and with it the capital Lest. All the money had been confiscated by Cerebus. A tavern and a grocery store belonging to the same owner who rents submissive also the only two buildings remained intact in the area. The buildings are perched on the mountain, in part Lest abandoned after the ascension. The innkeeper, Jaka and her husband Rick, the writer Oscar Melmoth (modeled on Wilde), "Fred" aka Cerebus, forced a pseudonym by the new political reality. These elements
Jaka's Story, a story from the narrative density that I painful is the thought of summarizing it, so I will not. Everything is 'forced' in these pages: laughter, tears, nostalgia, bitterness, irony, tragedy, pain, and is a perfect microcosm of the narrative, in my opinion the pinnacle of up Sim now. It 's all so perfect that, as in a circle at the end of Cerebus is in the same situation as before.
Melmoth n.139 / No 150. So Sim Melmoth summarizes: "Cerebus, Jaka mistakenly believing that she is dead, stayed (in a state of semicatatonia NDA) to the Dino's Cafe, clutching the doll Jaka's childhood, Missy, and his sword. The other half of the story is a faithful record of the last days of Oscar Wilde. " In many delicious numbers Sim prepares and prepares us for the halfway point of the number 150: the soft tone of the narrative, the sad irony of the story of Cerebus, the tragic last moments of subdued Oscar Wilde to contribute fully to the idea of calm before the storm. MOTHERS & DAUGHTERS
Nos 151. With No 151 Sim begins
Mothers & Daughters a long chapter that is divided into several sottovicende. The plot is almost impossible to sum up: everything that was in the first 150 numbers is reviewed and redefined, almost episode by episode. The author seems to expand the story, coming in the last numbers almost to the breaking point, yet there is always something that keeps us riveted to the page as in the best tradition of the serial cliff-hanger. So in "Endgame", the episode of June (n.183), Cerebus is covered in blood in front of a Cirin armed with a sword, is going to make our hero? To be continued ...
[in the meantime the maxi series ended, nda] THE LANGUAGE OF Cerebus. Nothing is more true: Cerebus has really been a lot of things and this is one of the reasons why it is so damn hard to talk about. Another reason is that condensed in the title one of the books: "Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon, that is to say" Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon "and Cerebus is unique in all. Let me explain: since the authors (one writes and draws the people, the other draws the backgrounds), there is nothing that can tie this series to a publishing category that can tame the rushing fresh renewing of numbers in number. I try to materialize the concept: I guess, since you're reading this, you all know the comic-book format, usually the fan after reading his register puts it in one of those bags that fit like a glove : well, Cerebus American publishing industry as it is, physically, his books are those bags at the end you can make them fit but that is not their size, the books are a few millimeters wider than the standard size bags and ends that bend until the plastic is deformed. But what makes this aardvark (Cerebus is an aardvark) so special? To answer this question without sounding like a man possessed I will use some terms of species (ie concepts, within which there is a lot of other stuff): I will start from organic, then move on to structure, write and read and finally the word key developments will give everything a more dynamic way.
ORGANICITA’. Chi legge CEREBUS non può fare a meno di notare l’assoluta padronanza dei mezzi espressivi da parte di Dave Sim: il testo narrativo, il segno grafico, la scansione della pagina, tutto tende a dialogare con il lettore e, cosa ancor più notevole, tale scansione è focalizzata: non ci troviamo di fronte ad una serie di illustrazioni in cui il testo ha solo il compito di allungare il tempo di lettura di una scazzottata, né tanto meno a un piano sequenza interminabile con voce in didascalia che ci racconta ogni passo per strada del protagonista. O meglio queste cose ci sono tutte, ma se ci sono hanno una ragione per esserci e il lettore è condotto per mano da Sim a scoprire quale sia tale ragione. Pose plastiche, brani di novel, whole pages to be read must be reversed because the protagonist has a colossal hangover, all these things are gimmicks thrown in history to give the reader the feeling of reading something different than usual, all these things make history, vivify script, text and design by sending an impression of organic diversity, as well as the universe is manifold and comprehensive reference of the reader.
STRUCTURE. Look at the structure of the story, as it has developed so far allows us to highlight some of the features that make it unique Cerebus. We try to follow the growth of a narrative character of the main stream, ie the superhero genre: what is striking, for the serialization needs to infinity, is that this character lives a life cycle, made up of repeating events, as if it ran along the circumference of a circle, sometimes someone comes along like a Moore, Miller, a Nocenti, which gives a fist on the table and blows up the needle on the turntable of a concentric outer circle, often without even get someone else to raise it, strip the needle into one of the closest inner circles. While maintaining its circularity, the structure of Cerebus is a spiral structure: the flow of the narrative thinks himself tirelessly, events that belong to the prehistory the character grow with him, taking on a new meaning, the supporting actors are changed, yield a more active role as they proceed in a matter that should be remembered, has already defined an extension (the three hundredth number, in fact, the series should end with the hero's death). The word continuity, terrible deity in whose name they sacrifice many ideas back to be resized by the art of Sim, that ingredient of consistency needed in a fictional universe, as was the early days of Marvel.
WRITING. Dave Sim is a writer. I use this term in a wider when I meet each of the various write operations that peek out from the page of Cerebus. The variety of forms and procedures is another singularity that characterizes this series: every narrative device used in the traditional literature is taken up by firms and bent to his expressive needs, so we find the narrative Chinese boxes, the listing of pages newspaper, the dialogue and the narrative shows, the inclusion of characters and episodes in our world of readers, not only, each page is accompanied by a "voice" fits, and writing Sim knows what to do, for the occasion, apocalyptic and dramatic, poignant, sentimental, humorous, crazy, epic, nostalgic, cold as an official report and moved as a memory ... But there is also that other writing, which is typical only of those who write comics conscious to speak in a way that it is only comic: Sim not only uses the pen to write, even his pen "writes" the calligraphic mark and clean, refined over the years, he tells his story in pictures and meticulous, with the help of Gerhard, full of details. E 'then the task of scanning the page carefully orchestrate this dialogue of images and words, to allow the reader to linger on each page only what is necessary, because the pace does not slow down the reading of the narrative.
READING. But who is reading Cerebus? Excluding Orthodox fanatics such as myself (who has already booked the hotel room in Kitchener, Ontario in 2004, for that is when this "miniseries" three hundred numbers should end), the only characteristic shared by the readers of Cerebus is given the certainty that, after reading each issue, have grown a little bit: both the fan of Spawn, who bought it did Cerebus guest-star on his favorite magazine, is the intellectual who buys it because it is "in" show cover, together with that of Joyce's Ulysses, close under his arm, both, after passing the initial impact work with very ruthless with those who buy an album at random, they discover that Cerebus has somewhat changed: the first reading of his return to comics with a slightly more critical eye, the second will have an idea maybe a little wider literature. The heterogeneity of the public is perhaps the result reflected the diversity of styles found in the series, Sim has created a fictional universe has a complex syntax so as to allow the coexistence of simultaneous record against: in our world as the sweet and sour coexist Cerebus so you can laugh to tears of highly dramatic situations and also, more rare, moved nell'intuire much bitterness behind a bar. It is not just a matter of extremes: flipping through the pages of the register at the same time you can enjoy a good adventure story, a chapter of a Bildungsroman, a vicious parody of Comicdom and American fandom, bloody fight sequence ( believe me when I say that the drawings and onomatopoeia send an almost physical pain to those who read) and yet poignant love stories, intense pages of nonsense humor, metaphysical dialogues (venue to be chosen on the lunar surface or on a floor existence, etc.). etc..
EVOLUTION. Thus, the page scrolls, the stories follow one another, some chapters are closed for not ever be reopened, new directions for reading open before the reader can hide old friends or new characters. At every step, but we feel we do and even when Sim forces us to turn, makes it to throw new light on what he has said before: nothing is ever the same thing twice. And 'This is perhaps the greatest of the secrets of Cerebus: the constant push forward which led to the evolution of history to conform with the changing needs of expression of the author, to adapt to the universe of departure of the player to change their internal coordinates to reconstruct different each time. It 's true, it is hard to read Cerebus starting from the middle, but a you are familiar with the characters and their voices will be a pleasure to dig into their past, the macro structure narrative units (the books in which it was divided history) makes it easier by allowing the reader to embrace the illusion of a solid complete set, silencing for the moment the dizziness caused by the amount of pages overall. An article
exception is the commitment with which the author defends the rights of Cerebus the self-publishing artist (ie that the author publishes his stories autoproducendosi or otherwise preserving the rights of his characters): his advice, the offering space on his head to the independent market, the fierce satire of mondo e delle produzioni delle majors fanno parte integrante di ciò che Dave Sim offre a chi acquista un suo albo. Leggendo Cerebus si ha veramente l’idea della differenza che corre tra un personaggio che ha alle spalle fatica, gioia, sudore e sbronze di chi lo ha creato, ed un altro che invece è programmato freddamente in base a motivazioni esclusivamente economiche, molto spesso da individui che sanno tutto di marketing ma ben poco dell’arte di narrare una bella storia.
Questo articolo era apparso originariamente sul numero 26 della rivista "Fumo di China" e, in rete, sul sito d'informazione fumettistica "Fumetti di carta" (a questo indirizzo ).
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