2002-09-25 - 11:58 p.m.

Three Mean Comics

Well, today was Wednesday, and that means it's time to pick up the new comic deliveries at UPS.

Last week I mentioned that UPS might be instituting a new policy that wouldn't allow us to come in the building to pick up our books. UPS opens formally at 9 a.m., but we've been picking up our books at about 8:30. Was this special treatment at an end?

The answer is yes... and no. Apparently non-UPS people in the building are a "security issue" and we are no longer allowed inside. However, the customer window is open for us before 9 a.m., so we can still get our stuff before 9 a.m. This is a good thing, because when it's a big week we need all the time we can get before the store opens at 11.

However, because all the boxes have to come out through the customer window, the process is greatly slowed down. We can't get our boxes together ourselves, the UPS woman has to do it, and she has to take care of us one at a time. This slows down the process a LOT. I'm going to have to make an effort to start getting up even earlier on Wednesdays, so I can stand in line and wait for my books. Note to self: bring a book.

We'll see how long this lasts; it can't be any fun for the UPS lady to wrestle all those 50 pound comic boxes up to the counter.

This was a very light week for comics, which means that I'm sort of scrambling for books to review. It's not like there's a shortage of good comics, but I'm trying to avoid reviewing titles that I've reviewed before. For instance this week's issues of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Amazing Spiderman are great, but I've talked about them already. I'm trying to branch out here.

There is a book that came in this week that I've been reading for over twenty years, and I'm still getting it, but it has morphed into - well, I'm not sure WHAT it is any more.

Cerebus #282

This is not really a review of Cerebus, or even of this issue. I guess it's sort of a pre-review. A warning. This is a subject that if I decide to tackle it, I'm going to have to go on at great length, but I really can't do it now because I'm falling behind on this diary, and this is one review that's going to take a LOT of reading.

Cerebus is an independently produced black and white comic, and as you can see by its high numbering it has been coming out monthly for well over twenty years. There was a time when Cerebus was one of several successful black and white comics, the model that other black and white publishers aspired to, but time has shown that Cerebus, and its creator Dave Sim, is just about unique.

Cerebus is ostensibly the adventures of an anthropomorphic aardvark in a world of humans where magic works, and technology seems to be at around an 1850 level.

For years, Sim has said he intended to end the book at issue 300, but the book has been winding down for some time now. There is only a year and a half left of Cerebus now, but I'm wondering how he's going to stretch it out that far. Cerebus himself is old, fat and wondering about God. I really don't know how much longer this can go on.

Cerebus started out as a parody comic, specifically parodying Conan the Barbarian but it has moved far, far beyond that. I think in a lot of ways the word "genius" can be applied to Cerebus' creator, writer and artist, Dave Sim. He has a knack for parody and caricature that almost defies description. He is also the unequalled master of writing in dialect. There have been a lot of characters that strongly resembled certain celebrities (Groucho Marx, Mick Jagger, and Margaret Thatcher are just three I can think of) and his dialogue for them has been dead-on. There have been some funny, funny bits in Cerebus over the years.

Now, however, the comic has turned into a pulpit for Dave Sim and his very weird views about life, and especially about God. This entire issue is a dialogue between Cerebus, who is sort of a retired super-Pope in this world, and his chronicler/psychiatrist Koenigsberg, who is drawn to looks exactly like Woody Allen. And wouldn't you know it, "Koenigsberg" is Woody Allen's real last name. Obviously we don't have to think hard to figure out who this character is supposed to be.

Here's something dishonest: I'm reviewing a comic I haven't really read! In fact this is hardly a comic at all, but rather pages and pages of text and dialogue with occasional spot illustrations. On some pages the columns of type are literally pushing the pictures off the page. By the way, much of this text is in TINY six-point type. So, I haven't read it all, or even most of it. Just looking at it gives me a headache.

Dave Sim is a very, very smart guy but his views on things are so odd and primitive, that for a long time I thought he was joking. Well, I don't think that any more. I think that he is an intensely intelligent man asking some very deep questions, and like they say, when you stare at the void, the void stares back at you.

There is a word I'm trying to avoid using here, and that word is "crazy." Sim seems like an eminently reasonable guy, and from everything I've seen he is a methodical and logical thinker as well as a fearsome debater, but some of his readings of current and historical events seem so crackpot and his point of view is so misogynist that it seems to skew everything he says. Sim actually seems to think that women are inferior creatures, out to poison the pure intellect of men with their simpering emotionalism. Really!

But again, maybe I haven't read his stuff carefully enough. Maybe my mind is fettered by too many conventional beliefs to really understand what he is talking about. Maybe. And that's why I'm reserving judgment on this stuff until I've given it a thorough examination.

I will say this though: this book is just about unreadable. The philosophy has all but extinguished the entertainment. The tail is wagging the dog, big time.

Dork #10

Cartoonist/writer Evan Dorkin is NOT crazy. He's NEUROTIC, and that makes all the difference.

Dorkin is a funny, funny guy, in fact, you may have been entertained by him already and not even know it. He was one of the main writers on "Space Ghost Coast To Coast" as well as some other TV shows. I think there was a pilot for his "Eltingville Comic Collectors Club" strip that aired on the Cartoon Network recently.

Yes, Dorkin is a funny guy and one hell of a cartoonist, but man is he DARK. There is lots of sinister chuckles in the this book. For instance, the dorky members of the Eltingville Comic Club call into the comic collectibles show on the Shopping Network and send the host off into a homicidal rage. In "Mighty Carl Jung" the theories of psychiatrist Carl Jung are ridiculed in the form of...a monster movie??

It's wacky stuff folks! One also gets the idea that Dorkin is exorcising some demons with these sharp gags. Well, it's a good thing that I can take a joke because the image on the cover is of an angry mob burning down a comic book store.

Wolverine #181

My first thought after reading this issue: someone's been watching The Sopranos too much.

Basically the issue is about these three low-level underworld types, sitting in a bar, telling stories about the business, and about mobsters they fear. As it turns out they are afraid of the wrong person: Wolverine has just walked into the bar and he's looking for them.

This is kind of a cool story, in that these guys are set up to be absolute scum, and Wolverine kills the lot of them without breaking a sweat.

You know, I remember back in the day the people that wrote X-Men took great pains to say that Wolverine never killed anyone. In fact they'd have people that Wolverine had seemed to kill show up later all angry at how badly Wolvie had hurt them. No more for that stuff, there is no doubt that these guys are really dead.

Is this a good or a bad thing? I have no idea.