Some Final Thoughts on Church and State

I want to get back to the regularly scheduled superhero-themed posting (since the whole point of this blog is to be able to openly talk about comics I can't talk about to those who I'm trying to convince of the value of the medium), but I've got a couple more things to say about Cerebus. I'm just starting Mothers & Daughters now (issue 150 or so), but the ending of Church & State really impressed me.

This post is going to be chock-full of spoilers, so those who are concerned about such things may want to stop reading now.

Earlier, I was a little confused by the narrative decision to make Cerebus a rapist. As mentioned, it certainly allowed Sim to deal with some religious issues, and ended up revealing more about the character of Cerebus than one might expect, but it seemed like a pretty drastic step in turning your readership against your protagonist.

All of that became much more clear in the end of Church & State. Cerebus, having walked out of Astoria's trial to climb a giant tower to meet God, ends up on the moon talking with the Judge from Jules Feiffer's Little Murders. After the judge reveals that the world will end in 6000 years (which puts the events of Cerebus right about at the start date of the planet acc'd to the fundamentalists), Cerebus asks about his own destiny.

These three pages are some of the best I've read in a long while. Cerebus is told flatly, that all the intrigue, aspirations, scheming of the past 100 or so issues is completely moot. He failed at everything, and wasn't even there to see it happen or do anything about it. He is told, with finality, that his life will amount to nothing, and he will soon die - alone, unmourned, unloved. All of which would be bad enough, but the crushing reminder that he has no moral authority left to argue against this outcome after his rape of Astoria. The page and a half of the judge walking away into the bleak landscape of the moon is wonderful. Cerebus is alone with his guilt and self-loathing.

It's a rare emotion - one that doesn't get conveyed in any medium that often - the hidden shame, the fear of being judged (worse, the fear of being judged rightly), feelings of abject unworthiness. I can only think of a couple other examples that even come close (Joel's memory of killing a helpless animal in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Leland's guilt at the first time he let BOB inside of him in Twin Peaks), but neither comes close to this. This is, effectively, the fear of being condemned to Hell for something you know you did and you knew was wrong.

I can certainly see why the Wachowski Bros. tried to rip off this scene.

More Thoguhts on Cerebus

Immediately after my last post, I hit the first of what I assume will be many scenes that are a little hard to swallow in Cerebus. I was well aware going in of Sim's somewhat controversial views on feminism, but, to date, the book had actually been pretty interesting as far as its thoughts on theology and politcs and such, but this sequence was certainly a little off-putting.

(There are going to be some significant spoilers ahead, if A) anyone is reading this and B) cares)

So, the sequence in question involves Cerebus, in his capacity as Pope, interrogating his former advisor Astoria (who has just killed the other Pope). She has a long history of manipulating Cerebus in a variety of ways, but usually in a non-sexual fashion. This time, she offers to have sex with Cerebus. He hesitates, and she takes the opportunity to gloat that he can't as he's married and, despite his overall amoral pursuit of money and power, he is still an orthodox Tarimite and cannot have sex outside of marriage. This sets Cerebus off and, as an infallible Pope, annuls his previous marriage and marries Astoria, then proceeds to gag and rape her.

It's a rough scene to read. Part of it is, of course, that I tend to identify with Cerebus and his overall sense of misanthropy, and I'm damn sure there is no amount of gloating that could get me to rape anyone. I certainly get Sim's explanation (at least the one he's giving now) about the idea behind the scene. If infallibility is granted upon you, there's not really anything to keep you from doing anything you want. Cerebus is effectively immune from all judgement - either on a temporal legal level or in a larger spiritual sense. It's even more all-encompassing a free pass than the "if the President does it, it must be legal" line of thinking.

Still, it's an odd narrative choice to make your protagonist a rapist. (It's worth pointing out here that Sim, to his credit, definitively refers to this as rape and expressed dismay that the bulk of his letters were of the "she was asking for it" variety) I know Cerebus isn't supposed to be a role model, but there are those of us for whom rape is a much less forgiveable offense than baby killing (which is always good for a laugh).

Regardless, it does provide for some interesting characterization. Astoria's taunting (which certainly seems to have been accurate) does highlight Cerebus' inability to move beyond the fairly simple logic of Orthodox Tarimism (which is to say "Roman Catholicism"). Despite all his professed desire for gold, power, and revenge, he's still bound by an arbitrary set of rules that really no longer applies to him. Even after the rape, he certainly seems to feel uncomfortable about his actions. Neither character discusses what happened afterwards, though I expect it to become a significant issue down the road.

So, rough to read, but an interesting choice.

Some Thoughts on Assorted Indie Titles

Lately, I've been having trouble summoning up much enthusiasm for mainstream superhero comics. I'm not sure if it's fatigue induced by the extended crossoverness with no particular payoff of Infinite Crisis or the increasing dullness going on in 52 (which I'm still reading every week, if only to keep up with Mr. Wolk's excellent blog), but I'm not really enjoying much of what I'm reading. The new Flash title's been horrible. I kind of gave up Teen Titans for those Liefeld-drawn issues. Birds of Prey's been decent, but not particularly exciting. Robinson's Batman story was all right, but not remotely near the bar he's set for himself. I'm hoping the upcoming Morrison run on Detective will help out a bit, but, until then, I've been catching up on all the indie stuff I haven't read.

As I've mentioned before, I stopped reading comics for pretty much all of the 90's (from the time I was 15 until I was 25). While this certainly saved me from some good things (like just about everything Marvel published during this period), it also meant I had a lot of catching up to do. I'm just about caught up on the DC side. I read most of the big event storylines from the time (or at least skimmed them), as well as most of the recommended titles. So, now I just needed to catch up on the indie titles that either started in the 90's or were a little too adult-oriented for me to have read as a kid.

Started with 100 Bullets, which I discussed below, and have since moved on to David Lapham's Stray Bullets. I assume this title, and the fairly dramatic jumps in tone, location, and character must have been a little jarring in serialized form, but they work very nicely when each grouping is collected in the (lovely) hardcover collections. The first volume ("The Innocence of Nihilism") is, as the title states, fairly aggressively nihilistic, bordering on depressing. Once we move forward, and see some of the surviving characters making their way out west, it gets a little less brutal. Now, I'm not against brutality, per se, but it's hard to make much of an emotional attachment to characters that are likely to be dead by the issue's end. Of course, by the third volume, we're largely switched to another set of characters, but even they start to seep into each other's stories. Really, I think I'm mostly just impressed by the very neat way he takes small, compact stories and weaves them into a much larger constuction.

Also reading Cerebus, which was, when I started going to comic shops, THE title everyone (or at least the creepy older guys who hung out at the comic shop) was into. I never really gave it a shot as a kid, but tried getting into it a few years ago (inspired by the hooplah of the series' conclusion). It's not an easy one to get into. The first few issues are very very heavy with parody - mostly of Conan - which didn't really do much for me. Of course, I'm sort of whishing I'd paid better attention to the first few issues, as they were apparently the only introduction to the various countries and peoples of Cerebus' homeland you get during the series. Once I got to the "High Society" storyline, I realized I was getting fairly well sucked in to the elaborately complex religious-political machinations that make up the series (at least in the first third). I'm currently in the middle of "Church and State II" and am just starting to feel like I have a handle on what is going on.

There's still a lot that's off-putting about the title. Sim's insistence on parody is jarring - I really don't understand the purpose of having an Elric parody who talks like Foghorn Leghorn or of making a very important, central character look and act like Groucho Marx. I suppose it's not any more absurd than having an aardvark as your central character, but it's enough to pull the reader out of the story. The worst offense is the "timely" parodies of superheroes. I'm currently having to deal with the Roach (the ongoing superhero parody of, in order, Batman, Captain American, Moon Knight, Wolverine, and Spiderman) engaging in the "Secret Sacred Wars." It's so unfunny I'm not sure it counts as parody.

On the other hand, Cerebus is perhaps one of the more relatable comic characters I've encountered. Shortly before writing this, I came across this:


It's like they made a comic about me.


Also started reading Love and Rockets. I started with the first volume, which may have been a bad idea (based on what I've read about the series). Jaime's early stories all seem to be Archie comics set in a Dadaist sci-fi story. Which, normally, would be right up my alley, but they are so full of gibberish, it's almost impossible to read. Gilbert's stories are possibly worse (at least Bem was), with the exception of the last story in the collection, which is apparently the first of the Palomar stories. I kind of liked that one. Are there any Love and Rockets fans out there who can offer encouragement here? Should I keep reading, or is the first collection a fair representation of the series?