Cerebus the Aardvark

Cerebus the Aardvark (or simply Cerebus) was an ambitious monthly independent comic book begun by Canadian artist Dave Sim in 1977, and running for 300 issues and 6,000 pages, through March 2004. Now complete, it marks the longest-running English-language comic book series ever by a single writer/artist. It leads its closest challenger (Erik Larsen's second volume of The Savage Dragon) by over 170 issues. (Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub, in Japanese, ran over 9,000 pages.)

History of the book

Cerebus was, for almost its entire run, self-published by Sim under his Aardvark-Vanaheim, Inc. publishing banner (for the first few years Aardvark-Vanaheim's publisher was Deni Loubert, Sim's then-wife). Sim's position as a pioneering self-publisher in comics inspired numerous writer/artists after him, most notably Jeff Smith (Bone), Terry Moore (Strangers In Paradise), and Martin Wagner (Hepcats).

Related Topics:
Deni Loubert - Jeff Smith - Bone - Terry Moore - Strangers In Paradise - Martin Wagner - Hepcats

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The title character is a misanthropic three-foot tall bipedal gray aardvark ("We're all funny animals in a world of humans," says Sim) who has, at various points in his life, been a mercenary, Prime Minister of the fictional city-state of Iest, Pope (in the mammoth Church and State saga), and renegade. He is an extremely morally ambiguous character, at times sympathetic, at others almost unpalatably callous (the Church and State storyline contains a notorious scene in which Cerebus hurls a baby from a rooftop).

Related Topics:
Aardvark - Mercenary - Morally

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Inspired in some ways by the Steve Gerber character Howard the Duck, the earliest issues of Cerebus took the form of a parody of Conan the Barbarian and its genre. (Howard had even appeared on the cover of the first issue of his own comic (January 1976) as a parodic barbarian character.) The series developed artistic sophistication and originality very quickly. Citing as his self-originated commandment, "Thou shall break every law in the book", Sim has done everything from flipping the page from horizontal to vertical and all stages in between to alternating comics with prose narrative, to including real dead or living people (himself included) in the storyline, all in an effort to explode the conventions of the North American comic book in almost every conceivable way.

Related Topics:
Steve Gerber - Howard the Duck - Conan the Barbarian

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In 1979, Sim, who was at the time a frequent marijuana user, experimented with LSD, taking the drug with such impunity that he was eventually hospitalized. It was this incident that Sim claims led to the inspiration to produce Cerebus for 300 monthly issues. The episodic adventures strayed further and further from heroic fantasy, and the twenty five-issue graphic novel High Society segued the narrative into a complex political satire and drama. Sim was joined by Gerhard, who gave the series impressively rendered backgrounds that became a visual hallmark, after issue #65.

Related Topics:
1979 - Marijuana - LSD - Heroic fantasy - Satire - Drama - Gerhard

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When Sim published the first Cerebus "phone book", a paperback collection of the High Society graphic novel, he angered retailers — who felt that their support had been instrumental in his series' success in an industry generally indifferent to small publishers — by offering the first printing via mail order only. The decision was a financial windfall for Sim, however, racking up over $150,000 in sales. Not long after, Sim became known for traveling to conventions and store signings in limousines (he spent $25,000 in limo service during his 1992 signing tour), and renting lavish suites at conventions at which he'd throw huge parties.

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In the 1990s, Sim became an outspoken advocate of creators' rights in comics, and used the editorial pages of Cerebus to promote self-publishing and greater artist activism. Sim was also the biggest individual supporter of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; when he guest-wrote the 10th issue of Todd McFarlane's best-selling Spawn, Sim donated his entire fee — over $100,000 — to the fund. During this same period he started publishing his and others' experiments with 24-hour comics in the back of his issues, which created greater awareness of this challenge, now the subject of an annual event for creating them.

Related Topics:
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund - Todd McFarlane - Spawn - 24-hour comic

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It is generally agreed that the graphic novel Jaka's Story, a tragic character study dealing with gender roles and the political suppression of art, is perhaps the series' pinnacle of narrative achievement. However, later issues of the series became almost inaccessibly personal and began to alienate many long-time fans, his female readers especially — though the series' visual innovation remained unparalleled. Issue #186 (collected in Reads) contained a lengthy prose section that was roundly attacked by both readers and critics for what was seen as overt misogyny, but which Sim describes as "anti-feminism". Influenced by writers such as Norman Mailer, Sim rejects what he believes are the basic principles of feminism and extols traditional values which he sees as being exclusively "male". He characterizes the genders as polar opposites; the "creative male light" and the "emotional female void." To Sim, Western society has capitulated to the feminist viewpoint and as such, has rejected the very values upon which Sim believes society was built. By examining contemporary marriage, reproductive rights, alimony and similar gender issues, Sim claims to find a complete obedience to feminist theory and a submission to the concept of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. This was followed by an even harsher essay in issue #265 called "Tangent," in which Sim identified a "feminist/homosexualist axis" that opposed traditional male values. He also argues that husbands should have the legal right to spank their wives and states outright that women are "inferior beings". This material appeared as Sim was retreating from public life and becoming more marginalized by his peers in the industry.

Related Topics:
Jaka's Story - Art - Misogyny - Norman Mailer

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Sim himself has appeared as a character in Cerebus, most notably to berate his creation in the graphic novel Minds. A writer entering his own fictional universe is not an idea which Sim can claim to have invented (see Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy and Grant Morrison's comic Animal Man), although he claims to have planned the encounter as early as 1979 — more than a decade before it actually took place.

Related Topics:
Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions - Paul Auster - New York Trilogy - Grant Morrison - Animal Man

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He reportedly cut all ties with his family and virtually all of his industry colleagues apart from Gerhard in order to finish the work. He has had very public fallings-out with both Terry Moore and Jeff Smith, the latter of whom Sim challenged to a boxing match in an editorial published in the comic. Sim claimed Smith lied about an argument the two had had over the infamous essay in issue #186, during which he allegedly threatened to give Sim a "fat lip." Sim also developed an adversarial relationship with Gary Groth, the confrontational publisher of The Comics Journal, an independently published comics magazine known for punishing criticisms and a decidedly non-mainstream editorial slant.

Related Topics:
Gary Groth - The Comics Journal

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Sim has stated (in an editorial contained in issue #297) that he regards the production of Cerebus as of secondary importance to his religious practice. A 2003 magazine interview describes Sim as reciting a prayer of his own devising five times a day, and having sold much of his furniture to donate the money to charity as an act of religious asceticism. This prayer was published in the back of issue #300.

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Sim, once a very public figure in the comics industry, now rarely leaves his native Kitchener, Ontario home. The publication in March 2004 of issue #300 was met with a muted, rather than celebratory, response from the comics industry. Though Sim reports the print run for #300 was doubled from that of recent issues, that would still only come to around 16,000 copies, a far cry from the series' high of over 35,000 copies around issues #100-125.

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A new quarterly publication Following Cerebus followed in August 2004, feature correspondence, essays and previously unpublished artwork from Sim.

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Sim was once quoted as saying that, had he died or otherwise chosen not to complete Cerebus prior to issue 300, that however many remaining issues there were left were to either consist of blank pages, or Gerhard was to have drawn his backgrounds only, leaving Sim's contribution blank. It is not known if this plan was ever serious, and it was obviously never put into effect. He has also confirmed that once he and Gerhard die, Cerebus will fall into the public domain. In the meantime, he has granted a general license for other creators to use the character of Cerebus in their own works.

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