The Aardvark-Vanaheim Pilgrimage: Cerebus 8: Mothers & Daughters 2: Women

               Dante I Didn't Tell You...

Cerebus: Women

Issues 163-174

October 1992-September 1993

247 pages

Mothers & Daughters: Flight is a book working its way through a thought to some conclusion. Mothers & Daughters: Women possesses the same feeling. While in his introduction Dave Sim states “Structurally, each of the four books in the series say the same thing, but they say it in very different ways,” a different emphasis (even though maybe part of the same larger argument exerted in Mothers & Daughters) on creator’s rights emerged with this volume.

A sequence of four images of parody in Women formed the axis around which the Book 8 coalesced. Parody lurked consistently in Cerebus from the beginning, but in Women it becomes a force exerting influence for the existence of the world.

In these four scenes beginning on page 224, a particularly tense situation involving Cerebus, Astoria, Cirin, and the ascension (a chance for mortals to talk to the god/goddess or even to achieve a sort of apotheosis).

The Roach, under the guise of Swoon, lord of the dreams and imagination and a caricature of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman begins shaking and shifting. On the following page chains, claws, ammunition belts, spikes, and giant shoulder pads emerge amidst very unpoetic onomatopoeia. The following two pages are each entirely filled character names, all followed with the trademark TM and beginning with “Total Sellthough RoachTM.”

 The commentary on Image, Valiant, Vertigo, Marvel, DC, and other highly promoted and ExtremeTM characters and comics companies has the subtlety and humor of watching someone else get hit in the crotch. The TM symbol tags these characters. The unleashing of these large muscled power-chord characters hold the threat of collapsing the world on which Vanaheim and Iest rest.  Some creations from the imagination could destroy a whole world unless the Swoon Roach is able to contain them in his robes.

What the hell is going on here?

Something with creator rights, and maybe even creator responsibility.

 

When working on his Divine Comedy (three poems describing a Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), the 14^th century Florentine poet Dante Alighieri worried on the role of the artist with regards to a reader’s understanding.  Dante in particular was worried about someone reading his poem and misunderstanding the ideas and could wander astray. In Canto V of the Inferno Dante-pilgrim learns how a book of Arthurian romances pushed Paolo and Francesca into Hell:

character’s travels to salvation through hell, purgatory, and heaven in the works

Trembling kissed my lips.

                                 That author and his book played the part

                                 of Gallehault. We read no more that day.

                                                                 -Mary Jo Bang’s translation

So, is the reader responsible for not having honed the necessary reading skills to understand the author’s intent?

Or, is the poet responsible for not making the ideas clear enough for the readers to understand?

While Cerebus: Book 8 doesn’t address these same questions, it does work with a question closely related to the ones puzzled over by Dante. Should creators maintain the rights and control over their creations? The answer provided for a creator’s responsibility to a reader’s understanding influences the answer to the rights of control.

Letting control of a creation escape the artist’s mastery carries a dark destructive stigma on these pages of Women. Management of a creative property by an organization that focuses on profit and mass appeal damns one as surely as reading Arthurian romances lead the Italian lovers to their hellish situation. This loss of control carries with it the concerns that originality and creativity and potential of the character will erode the original idea into a shallow parody of its original potential. Greater ethical concerns arise as well if creators hold a responsibility for the effect of their creations. Setting the work loose to wander like Frankenstein’s monster carries with it deadly consequences.

How much control should a creator retain over her or his character creations?

Are corporations better stewards of creative properties and better able to expand and explore the full range and potential of the character, or is the single creator better able to realize their story lines with their greater resources and financial advantages than a single creator ever could?

Is a creator still responsible for what becomes of a character after others hold the legal rights?

What is the relation between a creation and the creator’s need for money?

Who knows?

Swoon Roach knows.

With the meditation of the Swoon Roach and the slowly stated “must   contain   them all.    c   a   l   m,”  Cerebus: Women, posits that creations fare better with creators than corporations.  Swoon Roach subsumes the creations bursting forth into his chest, literally keeping them close to his heart, and maintains peace.  

While not directly answering the question with which Dante struggled, Cerebus: Women hints that, for better and worse, the actions and ideas occurring in the pages of Cerebus emerged from Dave Sim, not editors, distributors, or secret cabals of all-powerful fanboys.

The creator cares for and stays with his creation. And, love or hate what the creator does, there is some nobility and admiration, calmness, truth and love that occurs in such a choice.

The Aardvark-Vanaheim Pilgrimage: Cerebus 7: Mothers & Daughters 1: Flight

Absurd Ascents

Cerebus: Flight

Issues 151-162

October 1991-September 1992

 246 pages 

Flight begins by continuing the ending of Melmoth. This seventh book in the aardvark’s chronicle tells of the failed revolt in the town of Iest, follows Cerebus into different dimensions where some workings of the universe are explained to him, and a parody of the Punisher and vigilante sexual frustration. The volume shifts from action to the philosophical to funny for a captivating balance.

Within the issue, a three page sequence captured the themes and tone of the entire book. This sequence begins on page 62. Seven men armed with swords, shields, and murderous looks, with and yelling “EYAAAAAA.” These attackers charge across the cobble-stoned streets toward four sword-wielding Cirinists (think of them as extremely conservative republican radical militant feminists). The Cirinists exude an aura of calm. They hold their swords at relaxed angels and slightly inclined their heads in their space at the bottom of the page. Disdain is conveyed with no depicted facial features with such skill that viewers begin to question their self worth.

Page 63 hides the carnage behind block letter words. A whole page filled with only words. Nothing like this ever appeared in a comic previously read and few pages since have utilized a similar technique.

Page 64 brings the twist cinched this three page full-page sequence. Three of the Cirinists gaze directly at the reader (in the context of the story they’re looking at Cerebus standing on a balcony) and all the attackers lie dead and bleeding on the street, chopped from life by the Cirinists.

Of everything from this first book in the Mothers & Daughters storyline, these three pages hold the themes of the story. The themes multiply from the conflict suggested in the title and goes on to include the opposition of female and male, calm set against excitement, individuality set against anonymity (in that readers can see the faces of the attackers but the faces of the Cirinists are concealed  both by not facing the reader and by wearing hoods), attack versus defense, motion/change set against immobility and stasis/stability. Given that the Cirinists easily cut down the male attackers, without any of the four suffering death or even injury, at this point in the story the Cirinists/mothers and the list of ideas they represent from the above paragraph have a pretty secure grip on power and control in the society.

Cerebus, as he does in so much of the book, escapes this dichotomy and acts as a wild card. He was the one that incited the attack on the Cirinists, and he’s the one the Cirinists look up to in the lower panel of page 64. But the look up contains no admiration, but based on the angle of Cirinist eyebrows, contains rather annoyance and disdain that such a trickster would dare exist and upset the order of Cirinist rule. Cerebus, in the first compact panel of page 65 appears too surprised by the easily defeated rebellion. Juxtaposing this small panel after the three large expansive pages of the Cirinists in action, aids in the emphasis of Cerebus limited power (in comparison with the Cirinists) and also conveys the unbalanced ratio set with another dichotomy of order (Cirinists) and chaos (Cerebus). The above ideas ooze throughout the storyline, an impressive bit of work for four panels at the beginning of a 49 issue story arc.

When rereading this volume another welcome aspect is the greater clarification of the larger idea and universal workings taking place in the story and that have been limited and alluded to in previous pages:

            glowing coins

            the hooded aardvark

            the scrawny wrinkly aardvark with bad hair

            Astoria

            Suenteus Po

            various tribes, groups, idols, etc.

While the explanation is greatly welcome, it creates the concern of how to

1. Speak/write about the profound without sounding trite

2. What images to use in tandem with this weighty and lengthy exposition

3, How to make this massive (but welcome) info dump from being too boring

Sim and Gerhard masterfully apply the absurd (and not for the first time) and the surreal to match and accompany the written explanations to provide apt and attention holding visuals, but also visuals that connect to the conveyed ideas that provide a bit of grandeur that enhances the written word.  A giant celestial chess game hints at some rules to the universe and some control over one’s destiny without any need for melodramatic belittling explanations. During Cerebus’s ascent through the N^th Spheres thin columns of images offset the text which is displayed like a long dense Robert Creely poem. Lots of white space stretches across the page and this emptiness works a double duty. Not only does it mirror the otherworldly journey of Cerebus, it also doesn’t overwhelm the reader with a page packed tight with complex text and images. Here distinct equal spaces reside on the page and Cerebus: Flight comes as close as possible to squaring the circle in comic books by composing an equal area for the image and the word.