Controversial creator Dave Sim’s entire Cerebus series is available on Humble Bundle, the charity-supporting retail site – for as little as $18. The hard-to-find books, once considered a pioneering classic of the emergent indie scene of the late 1970s and 1980s, are available as DRM-free PDFs. A portion of the proceeds will go to the Global FoodBanking Network. The bundle is being offered until July 18.
According to Humble Bundle:
“A giant of indie comics. Explore the pioneering indie comic saga Cerebus, a sprawling epic spanning 6,000 pages, touching on humor, political satire, and the wide-ranging philosophical musings of its creator Dave Sim. It also stars an anthropomorphic aardvark. What starts out as a send-up of Conan-style sword & sorcery evolves into something much bigger. Experience it all in this bundle, from early graphic novel chapters like High Society and Church & State, to the very end of the saga in The Last Day. Pay what you want for this essential cult classic and help support the Global Foodbanking Network with your purchase.”
Dave Sim’s Cerebus was a sprawling 300 issue self-published comic that acted as the inspiration and spearhead of the indie comics movement, which emerged as the comic book market shifted from newsstands to specialist stores and dedicated distribution networks. It ran from 1977 until 2004 as single issues, and was collected into sixteen large “telephone book” reprintings. It acted as a model for many in the indie scene to follow, such as for Jeff Smith’s Bone, Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise and more.
The early part of the series began as a parody of the Marvel Comics adaptation of Conan the Barbarian by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith before turning to exploration of political and philosophical themes. Arcs like High Society, Church and State, and Jaka’s Story were praised by critics. The latter part of the series leans heavily into misogyny – and the reclusive Sim’s own alleged misogynistic, homophobic, and questionable behaviour during and since – have rendered it a work no longer much spoken in high regard. Nowadays it is unusual to find any of the print collections in the wild (though rescanned, touched up editions do make it out there). All 300 issues are available on archive.org, however.
The Global FoodBanking Network covers over 40 countries and regions with active food bank groups, which are organised charitable organisations distributing food to those in desperate need, as well as reducing food waste. You can donate to them directly.
I would like to point out that if you click “adjust donation” and then “custom amount,” you can make sure no money goes to the detestable Sim. Or maybe a few cents, just so they know you did that on purpose.
The funny thing about the second half of Cerebus, especially after #186 is that Dave Sim, both the character and the creator of the book, never realize that the humanity that he brings to his characters utterly invalidates Sim’s wretched social and political beliefs as he espoused them in the letter columns of the last 80 or so issues of the series. It’s no small feat that both Sim and Cerebus seem to intuit that Jaka was right to leave Cerebus without realizing that it’s because Cerebus treated her like trash.
For someone who was self-aware enough to write himself into his own comic as its God, Sim’ really lacks the self-awareness to understand that his own crwative subconcious is telling himself that he’s wrong. Cerebus’s death in the last issue of the comic, alone and unlived and in accordance with Weisshaupt’s prophecy was a sad, pitiful and utterly fitting end to a character who got what he deserved in fulfilling that prophecy.
And that’s what makes it a perfect and perfectly weird comic, an accidental deconstruction of cognitive dissonance by a creator who’s unaware of what he’s doing, that he’s telling himself that he’s utterly wrong. And that’s worth the cost of the HumbleBundle to get the whole thing.
18 dollars divided by 6000 pages makes 0,003 dollars per page, or 6 cents per issue of 20 pages. Even if you believe ‘only the first half is any good’, that still makes it just 12 cents per issue ‘for the good ones’. If you like reading your comics digital (or at least you don’t mind as much), this really is a steal.
I wouldn’t consider Dave Sim ‘detestable’, he just isn’t right all of the time, and who is? If you like reading stuff you don’t necessarily agree with (or at least you object to the idea of disagreeing beforehand) Cerebus (now HE is detestable) is worth a try. Just don’t be offended if you don’t agree. At the end of the day, it IS just a comic. Dave is not starting up a political party to make a grab for power, he’s just stating his opinions in the context of some high level world-building with some meta thrown in before it was fashionable to do so. Dave is a genuine self-made-man, which comes with both staggering originality and vitality, but also some obvious blind spots. If nobody can ever tell you ‘no’, how can you ever really be proven wrong?