Dear Dave,
I wish I could have come to the SPACE convention. It sounds from the other participants on the Cerebus discussion list on Yahoo that it was a good time.
One of them mentioned that you've been somewhat disheartened by the lack of response the last few years. I think dropping the letter column had a lot to do with it. Many people who write to a comic book do so at least partly hoping to see their name -- or at least their
words if they send it anonymously -- in print. Also, while reports from SPACE and from other folks who have seen you elsewhere indicate that you're as gracious as ever in person, your writerly persona has become somewhat curmudgeonly over the years, and I'm sure at least some folks are scared away by that. I may be wrong about that, though.
The fanboys seem to line up to be abused by Warren Ellis.
Anyway, since you spoke of desiring letters, I'm writing you a letter.
I could quote from my recent defense of "Chasing Yahweh" on comicon.com, but you would probably find it to be a somewhat backhanded compliment, since I defended it mostly in terms of "I don't think it's nearly as bad as you're saying it is." I have to admit that the Cerebexegesis (as those of us on the Yahoo Cerebus list have been calling it) has not been my favorite stretch of issues.
When it began I was particularly miffed because the first part of "Latter Days" was the funniest stuff you've done since the early part of "Church & State." Yeah, I know, you hate to hear that the "older, funnier" stuff is better -- and by and large, I don't think it is. I
think the serious, more difficult stuff is, on the whole, more substantial and filling and ultimately more satisfying, like a steak dinner versus a hot fudge sundae -- or like the sundae itself vs. the whipped cream on top." Funny" is the whipped cream, I'll be the first
to admit. But I like whipped cream, and I was enjoying the Stooges and Rabbi and Spore and then all of a sudden we're going verse-by-verse through the 1611 edition of the King James Bible.
I absolutely hated this when you started it up. It was long. It was hard to read -- and not just because of the tiny type. I've read Genesis before, and I certainly don't need Cerebus to explain it to me! The fact that it quickly became apparent that Cerebus' rather goofy (in my opinion) interpretation was, in fact, your own as well didn't help. Woody was such an obvious sop to the masses wanting at least SOME funny that he wasn't even funny.
But, you know? As you kept going with it, I've actually become fascinated by how few truly twisted interpretations Cerebus has had to make to keep this seemingly ridiculous God/Yoohoo dichotomy going through the whole of Genesis. It really does seem to work. And while I still think you're wrong, I must admit you do a pretty good job of showing that you might be right. And Woody has grown on me. It's clear that he's not just a foil, or at least not the kind I thought he was at first. You have a clear purpose for him, skewering Therapy Nation while presenting what you consider the Real alternative. OK, fine.
Seeing there's a reason for it all makes the funnier parts funnier. I'm back on board.
I don't think the first part of "Latter Days" is ever going to be my avorite Cerebus book, but I suspect that a lot of folks who have been complaining about it haven't really read it (just as many people only skimmed the text parts of "Reads") and many of the rest will like it better when it's all collected in a big book and they read it like a novel instead of month-to-month. I remember "Melmoth" was reviled when it was coming out -- though I was one of the ones who liked it from the beginning -- and now many people think it's the high-water-mark of the whole series so far.
I can't wait to see what you've got in mind for an ending to this thing. I think we can all say that the Judge's curse/prophecy has been thoroughly dispelled. Even if Cerebus does turn out to die alone, unloved and unmourned it won't be because the Judge had anything to do with it. So all bets are off and we don't know how he's going to die.
I just wanted to let you know that there are still a lot of us out here who are not only buying each monthly issue, but reading it, even reading it closely and taking it seriously. Not all of us are going "Damn Sim and his tiny text of Bible passages!" And not all of us
think the Cerebexegesis is worthless, even those of us who may not agree with everything you have to say -- or for that matter, who agree with relatively little of what you're saying through the little gray guy here.
I find reading rigorous intellectual material from people with different views from myself to be an important part of keeping the mental equipment in shape, just like working out at the gym keeps some people's abs firm (I'm afraid I'm in better mental than physical shape). Too many people don't want to work that hard, which is why four of the last five U.S. Presidents (everybody but the elder Bush, who walked in on Reagan's laurels) have either been or pretended to be dim-witted dopes. Even Rhodes Scholar Clinton and Ph.D. in Physics Carter were "aw shucks" good ol' boys when it came time to greet the voters. Dubya probably isn't as dumb as he pretends to be, either, but he is almost aggressively anti-intellectual in the manner of Reagan and the late unlamented Spiro Agnew. This is what most U.S. citizens want, because this is how most of them are -- distrustful of thinking, as if there's something slightly sinister about it.
Woah! Getting way off topic -- although, as we often maintain on the Yahoo Cerebus list, you have embraced so many topics from religion to politics to the gender wars that very little is truly off-topic to Cerebus. One of the amazing things about this comic is the way it embraces and incorporates nearly all aspects of life as it is lived in the latter part of the 20th Century and early part of the 21st in English-speaking North America. Like Homer is said to have done for the Greeks, or "War and Peace" for that generation of Europeans. Along the way, you've found a place for almost everything.
Keep up the good work,
Steve Bolhafner
