The Aardvark-Vanaheim Pilgrimage: Cerebus 10: Mothers & Daughters 4: Minds

Oh, Neverminds

Cerebus: Minds

Issues 187-200

October 1994-November 1995

286 pages

Although Pluto has been kicked out of the solar system’s exclusive Planet Club, it still serves as a great locale for sorting out one’s thoughts.  Minds continues exploring dichotomies (actions and consequences) and maintains the mythic grandeur present in the previous Cerebus volumes.  Throughout this reading, surprise arose by the discovery that Minds fits the footsteps of a hero’s journey, and fulfills a role of myths according to Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces where myths can “touch and inspire deep creative centers dwells in the smallest nursery fairy tale –as the flavor of the ocean is contained in a droplet or the whole mystery of life within the egg of a flea” (4).

 

Summary: In this final installment of Mothers & Daughters, many of the lingering secrets about Cerebus receive explanation. It concludes one aspect of the aardvark’s life and sets him up for a new direction. 

Readers meet Cerebus and Cirin floating in space on a small chunk of rock.  They argue until the chunk of rock splits in two and sends each aardvark floating in opposite directions.

Readers follow Cerebus who engages his creator, Dave, in conversation. Dave answers Cerebus’s questions about his medallions and destiny to rule world (the earth-pig missed his chance).  The origins of Cirin and the Motherhood is explained (a sibling betrayal, a co-opting of identity and unhealthy heaps of denial resulted in the intolerant viciousness of the current Motherhood).  Jaka is revealed to Cerebus to be living and Dave shows that every possibility of Cerebus and Jaka getting together ends in disaster.  Such knowledge depresses Cerebus and, after some eye surgery, he ends up stranded on Pluto until Dave returns and transports Cerebus to a tavern at the Wall of Tsi. 

Response: Reading Minds feels like unleashing the two streams Heracles rerouted to sluice through Augeas’ stables.  This volume cleansed the muck of questions and massive supporting story elements that gathered around Cerebus in his previous186 issues. This refreshing narrative simultaneously gave the larger Cerebus arc a sense of enlarged possibility and imparted a sense of excitement and a strong dose of the unknown about the future narrative.

The structure of Minds occupies itself with images (compared to the Reads’s, the previous volume, preference to words).  Metacommentary again works its way, to the advantage of the story, into the narrative.  There are stunning celestial renderings of space, Jupiter, Saturn, and the surface of Pluto sprawl across pages and convey the mythic element of Cerebus better than any paragraph.  Joseph Campbell’s hero cycle provides a clarification that enlarges the purpose and setting for the celestial environment of Minds. 

After a prolonged study of mythology, Carl Jung, and many others the scholar of comparative myth and religion Joseph Campbell, derived a pattern for the trials and situations through which a protagonist progressed in mythology.  Campbell framed it as a hero on a quest.  Applying Campbell’s vague definition of “hero” (“the man [to be understood as human being] of self-achieved submission” on page 16) to Cerebus and looking more closely at a trial of a hero,  Cerebus’s environment in Minds acquires greater significance.

Of a trial endured by a hero, Campbell writes “And so it happens

that if anyone—in whatever society—undertakes for himself the perilous journey into the darkness by descending, either intentionally or unintentionally, into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth, he soon finds himself in a landscape of symbolic figures (any one of which may swallow him) which is no less marvelous than the wild Siberian world of the pudak [differing obstacles] and sacred mountains. …this is the process of dissolving, transcending, or transmuting the infantile images of our personal past…forms we may see reflect[] not only the whole picture of our present case, but also the clue to what we must do to be saved” (on page 101).

Space is Cerebus’s spiritual labyrinth, a symbolic landscape (and what better than the cold vacuum of space to represent Cerebus’s current ethical and moral state).  His journey through space and time on Pluto stands for his reflection and metamorphosis. 

In space and on Pluto Cerebus confronts his distasteful self and recognizes a change is needed in his actions. He resolves to make an effort at change, and he is whisked from the planet named after the Roman ruler of the dead “to  the little tavern at the Wall of Tsi—just below Castle Wallis” (Minds 282).  The voice of Dave gives clues to what Cerebus must do to be saved.

Though hesitant to suggest the idea, Cerebus’s eye patch could read as a parallel to Odin trading his eye for wisdom; perhaps this momentary loss of the eye and self-assessment give Cerebus, and readers, the sense that things are going to change around here, in the pages of Cerebus.

The choice of situating Cerebus’s spiritual trial on Pluto (named after the Roman god of the underworld) is a masterful stroke that reinvigorates a conventional trope.  The journeys to the underworld by Gilgamesh, Orpheus, Odysseus, and Aeneas, and even Percy Jackson are repeated when Cerebus gets a clue about what to do with his life on the surface of a dead planet.  Cold, dark,

and silent and far removed from the warmth of the sun, Pluto mirrors the sensations and perceptions experienced by the self examination Cerebus undertakes to discover that many many MANY abhorrent aspects of his personality.  Cerebus himself is like a ghost in that he is immune to any physical discomfort and is alone aside from his thoughts and a single psychic phone call to Aardvark-Vanaheim Publishing. 

The setting also clarifies the plethora of panels and pages bereft of words.  Space is vast, silent, and replete with solitude, in space, no one can hear you soliloquize.  Outer space is a perfect setting for self reflection, or intense intimate one-on-one conversation for those who don’t want to be interrupted or distracted from this thinking process.

While Reads promoted readers to think and examine their reads to arrive at their own conclusions, Minds gives another example of a locale and method on how to set about thinking and arriving at conclusions.

Minds ends with Cerebus jumping to his selected destination and with an amused Dave viewing the comic book page where his aardvark protagonist falls to his fate. Dave’s classification as Cerebus as an “ultra-maroon” promises the presence of future hijinks before concluding with a full page heralding the next story arc of Guys.  With the promise of free alcohol, and no last call, readers can mirror Cerebus in following the final imperative Dave gives Cerebus, “So jump already” to arrive at the next tale.  Cerebus falls into the next step of his hero’s journey.