Dante Alighieri: inker
Dave Sim: letterer
Sandeep Atwal: colorist
Review: Will Dubbeld
What started as a cheeky sendup of the sword-and-sorcery genre soon evolved into something else entirely.
A melange of drama, satire, metafiction, and frankly heavy work followed an otherwise lighter first volume.
I think I made through six or seven volumes before I had to step back for a bit. It's a amazing piece of writing, but my god does it get maudlin. For my own peace of mind I simply had to step away for a bit.
That was about 4 years ago . . .
In any case, when news of a new Cerebus miniseries dropped I opted to check it out. Sim has created a seminal work of fiction and I felt almost obligated to read his new comic.
Like I owed it to myself to see what Ol' Cerebus was up to these days.
12-year old spoiler alert:
Cerebus dies at the end of his original run.
And evidently goes to Hell.
Bringing us to our current series . . .
This book has me perplexed. Apparently Dave Sim suffered some sort of wrist injury/ailment at some point that has severely limited his ability to draw, but his creativity has not been stifled.
Instead of drafting new art, Dave Sim has made a collage of Cerebus against the backdrop of Gustave Doré's illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy.
In sequential, one page gags like one finds in newspaper comic strips.
It's Cerebus the Aardvark seen through the comedic lens of Garfield or The Wizard of Id.
It's weird.
There doesn't seem to be any sort of ongoing narrative, just a series of clever jokes in a few panels. I absolutely love Doré's art so that is some consolation for the confusion caused by Sim's latest endeavor.
I'm in for all 4 issues of this miniseries, but it's not the Cerebus with which I have a love/hate relationship.
Big props to Sim for experiments in new territory but I've got an inkling this series may be a bit of a flash in the pan.
Caveat emptor.
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