Cerebus the Newsletter #18

Edited by Margaret Liss
www.friendsofcerebus.org
PO Box 6997
Warwick, RI
02887
USA

Cerebus was an incredibly long running (300 issues over more than 25 years) indie comic created by Dave Sim and Gerhard that started off as a barbarian parody, but eventually featured a lot of political satire, philosophy, and other stuff (like Groucho Marx). It's an incredibly impressive feat, and what I've read of it has been pretty good.

It's just too bad that Dave Sim went insane.

You might think I'm exaggerating, but people seem to think that he has real mental health issues. His opinions about religion, gender (or more specifically women and their role in society), and philosophy are...controversial to say the least. Despite this he continues to have many ardent supporters, and Cerebus itself is an incredibly impressive work with large sections that are really good.

Cerebus the Newsletter is a fanzine that has come out since the Cerebus comic ended. It features fanart, Cerebus history, letters from readers, essays about various philosophical/mystical aspects of Cerebus, and a discussion segment with Dave Sim called "God Talk".

The discussion is interesting because in it Sim talks about his religious beliefs. Some of it seems kind of reasonable, some of it is kind of gibberish, and some of it is just flat out weird.

"It's only in the last couple of years that I've fully repented: I would have been better off to never have fornicated.

Fornication was a mistake from the first to the last one. I only hope I have enough years left to make amends.

[...]

I was in a cesspool up to my eyeballs and I've spent eleven years climbing out of it."

Dave Sim is a weird guy, and he's so tied to his own impressive body of work, that it seems reading about him is almost as important as reading the work itself.