Cerebus: Melmoth (Issues 139-150)
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- Опубліковано 25 вер 2024
- Hi. This short video looks at the equally short story, Melmoth, that ran in issues 139-150 of Cerebus. Written, lettered and characters drawn and inked by Dave Sim. Backgrounds illustrated and inked by Gerhard.
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I just finished Melmoth for the first time yesterday. I found it strangely compelling, despite not really knowing its import for the story as a whole.
Thanks for making this series. I have been watching each video once I finish the corresponding Cerebus volume. I'll be sad to go on without your thoughtful reflections, but I understand that these things take time! I look forward to your next video.
Your deep dive into Cerebus is one of the most fascinating projects you have in my opinion. I hope you see it through (even though things are going to go straight to Hell eventually with Sim unraveling)! Keep up the good work.
Thank you! I will continue the project until issue 200 for sure. That final script is about 98% complete. Then I think I will stop. I'm not sure I'd be able to objectively analyze or discuss the series when it becomes nothing more than a platform for Sim's views.
@@StrangeBrainPartsI’m happy to see this series will continue, though I’m a little sad that you won’t finish the other books after Minds. I’m kinda morbidly curious in hearing how people perceive Sim’s views (especially from female readers) and how they feel after finishing Cerebus, in general.
@@jikorijo4516yeah sure. I agree.
This was the first Cerebus I read (my brother had all of them, but this was the only one he left laying out for some reason) and I thought Oscar Wilde was a major, ongoing character in the story who tragically died here.
Do you or your bro still like Melmoth and the rest of the Cerebus series?
@@jikorijo4516 My bro is a huge fan. I reread the series maybe 8 years ago (I skipped most of Reads, as I did initially). I do think as a work of art it's undeniably exceptional, especially the first half or so. I don't try to separate the author from it. I think Sim makes that impossible. I'm reading a work of art from someone I disagree adamantly with. I don't that invalidates the series, though it obviously colors it.
So all of that to say, yeah, I like Cerebus. I doubt I'll ever reread all of it, but am sure I will read the first trades more times in my life.
Thanks for the answer. I’ve read up to #56 and am kinda curious (in a normal + morbid way) to finish the series. I do like what I’ve read and bought the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury, a Cerebus Campaign ‘93 t-shirt, the first remastered volume (and I have the remastered High Society on route to me, as we speak), and all the of single issues not collected in the trade paperbacks. Despite what little I know of Sim’s ridiculous views on women, I do enjoy the series, but I’m not sure if I’ll pick up the latter volumes. But, hey, who knows.
I’m always interested to hear how people feel about the series and Dave Sim since, from what I’ve heard, the series is so linked to Sim’s opinions.
@@jikorijo4516 The series gets better and better until about the middle, somewhere around Jaka's story depending on who you ask. Church and State one and two are a satirical masterpiece. Then, somewhere around Reads, the self indulgence and creepy misogynistic essays start to stain the material. That continues until later books, when it's clear the writer's weird opinions are now behind the wheel entirely. The art is outstanding all the way through though.
There's some absolutely amazing cover art here! I always enjoyed Melmoth, but don't think there's any hidden depth to it that you've missed. Dave just had to stuff this material into Cerebus (like he did later with F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Hemingways) because he couldn't both do a monthly Cerebus comic and work on an original project, but the material had great meaning to him so it had be to included within the pages of Cerebus.
He also had to put some filler to reach the 300 issues he promised. Would have been easier to admit he was wrong and that the series had to be shorter, but Dave is Dave, a dude who is his mind cannot be wrong.
I think the three historical-literary writers Sim brings in is an important grouping: Wilde, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway.
sure. So what? Not an attack on you, obviously.
@@johnm.withersiv4352 The Hemingway bit is super weird and weirder how he presents him and his wife like a really good couple while telling you in the after notes "See how sick they are?".
Love all of your Cerebus videos. I know it wouldn't be a pleasant journey, in ways, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't love to see further videos analyzing all the rest of the series in some detail (maybe sidelining the text portions since you've discussed it before). That would likely be short. 😂
It's just a fascinatingly winding idea of how the fate of the un-admirable protagonist, the creator, and the series itself map with such unintended parallels. And you do a great job of exploring it all.
I would like dave Sim to do a series either video or a annotated book explaining the ever loving shit out of every little bit of cerebus. It's surprising to me that he hasn't
I read Melmoth in a detox center. In this giant room with row after row of beds. The whole place was quiet. I read the whole thing in 2 days. Then I went out and got high again but those two days were so surreal and comforting. It might sound weird but I would go back to that time and place if I could just to feel the peace that I felt then.
I later found out about Sims anti feminist stuff later. It is the reason I have not read anything else by him.
@@HonestDepression101 You should check his debate with Gail Simone, I think it was fully transcribed but for a "too long; didn't read" version of it, he basically went unprepared and making lots of asumptions, like implying Gail's husband had to do the dishes in the house because she was the working person.
@@HonestDepression101 There are some amazing writers, artists, and performer whose politics I find abhorrent, but I think even very broken people can make things of beauty.
I've mentioned before that I agree with your assessment of Melmoth as the prelude to Cerebus as a platform for what was on Sim's mind rather than simply the narrative of a life. I wonder had Sim already said that the main story would be wrapped up 200 at this point or did it come after? I can't remember, but if he enjoyed his diversion maybe this was when the decision was made? A re-read I will get to one day will tell I guess.
Couple (or three) points. I actually think Melmoth is pretty successful on two levels. I enjoy it as a story in its own right. I also think its quite successful in weaving the main plot in. As you say as a pause in the series to draw breathe, that works well now its finished. Also to show the impact of all that happened on Cerebus and set up his violent drive to come. Secondly as an examination of what was meant by dieing alone and unloved as we are promised is Cerebus fate. We see the folks surrounding Oscar and yet in that final moment... I mean did that need 12 episodes... well no, but it all adds to making this work as part of the whole, while being its own thing.
Interesting that he directly mentions not being a feminist during Melmoth. I last read it in the phone book so its been an age since I read the floppies (I've now rebought up to 200 in singles - damn being a collector!). Does seem to show a path to what will come.
Finally one important thing I love this channel and even though I get distracted by other channels and flirt with them behind your back (Hello Cartoon Kayfabe and Casually Comics) its videos like this that remind me why this is my fav and the one I choose to support as much as I can. So thanks for keeping on even if you're still not reaching your goal - I for one really appreciate it.
I also love this channel and damn being a collector. I have all the phone books(glad to see someone else still calling them that) but I still buy single issues for letter pages whenever I see them for cheap. Despite really really hating most of the later half
I must be in a minority then, as I really like Melmoth.
It’s one of my favourite parts of all of Cerebus.
Something about it just clicks with me.
Sterling work as always SBP.
I very much enjoyed + appreciated your thoughts + take on it.
Thank you! As implied in the video, I endured the year long pause when it was originally published. And I think that partially colours my opinion. It's certainly not terrible. It's just an odd, perhaps too long of a pause of the actual narrative.
I started reading Cerebus back with issue #29. So by the time of Melmoth, I was on cruise control, and not fully engaged in the story, just sort of waiting for something interesting to happen. All I knew for sure at this point was that I was determined to follow the series to the end, since Dave had said that there *would* be an end to the comic.
Thank you for another Cerebus video! I also enjoyed your First Issue Disaster video a while back as well 👍
You're welcome! And thank you for watching.
Yeah, Melmoth is a curious one, but I think you're selling Sim short as a writer. Nothing he spent nearly a year of his life on writing and drawing is so casual to him, and the themes of mortality, action/inaction, creative expression and its consequences as societal repression are well-embedded in the short tale and consistent with the rest of the Cerebus work. Yes, it's heady and distant because everything Sim did was heady and distant. He's the guy who claims to have no emotions and considers emotions to be a lesser form, remember? I believe that this was around the time, not only where he started down the Canadian-style Rupert Murdoch rabbit hole, but also when he started converging his own special form of "world religion bingo" as an amalgam of Judeo-Christianity and Muslim, so there are hints of a higher calling in the death of Wilde. My mind still will not accept that there are two versions of Wilde in Cerebus-- one real-fictional and one fictional-fictional, and that's supposed to indicate what exactly? What the fuck, Dave?
I'll also add here a suggestion that you do more in these videos to address the formalist side of the comic, which given the terrible story choices ahead, is at least two-thirds of any legitimate reason to examine the series' back half. In Melmoth, the development of Sim's pacing and just the use of setting is such a departure from Church and State in its crowded collage format and from Jaka's Story's hermetic domesticity. I'd say Melmoth not only "takes a breather" from the longer form stories, but opens up the light and space from the claustrophobic prison sequences he'd just completed. If the book had gone from those, from which the Cerebus character was almost completely absent, and crashed immediately into the Mothers and Daughter's action sequences, that would have been a mistake. It would have looked too much like Cerebus going on some kind of tropey "rescue mission" or a hoary revenge tale, which would have been out of character. It's much more effective to give him some distance and show that his actions against the Cirinists were more personal to him. He's coming back to life in violence as a barbarian would.
We're talking about the same dude who said how sad he was that Wilde had to his identity or risk death yet says homosexuality should be kept in closed doors. I love Cerebus what Dave is like the Bible, you can't take him word for word.
Also, I find it funny how he frames "emotion" as feminine (and void) and "logic" as masculine (and light), yet Jaka and Astoria are two of the most complex and down to earth characters in the book, while all the men in Cerebus are pretty much a caricature of selfishness. Specilaly funny the whole Rick situation where he's supposed to be illuminated and Sim presents his theological ramblings as some sort of higher form of thinking, like Rick becamse a Budda type figure when he's closest to a basement dweller teen.
@@RockoEstalonI remember his comment that gay men made him physically ill, and after being challenged on it, he was like, "You're going to get offended at my instinctual physical responses?" As if his bigotry was hard-wired and out of his control. I don't recall his extending that to something prescriptive, but it wouldn't surprise me. As a young reader, I found it all very confusing until someone pointed out his reference points were mostly lifted straight out of the Canadian Murdoch franchise. Now of course, it all makes total sense.
What is all this Canadian Murdock business about?
@@RockoEstalon I'd say that Astoria would be filed under "exception" in many ways, and ball-busting feminist in others. Jaka's later characterization in Going Home was much more Sim's typical female - emotion-driven and a time and energy suck on male progress. Don't forget that she's blamed for Cerebus not making it back in time to see his parents before they died.
We don't spend much time with the most enlightened version of Rick. He grows from his Jaka's Story naivete to being a religious leader that Cerebus only spots from the river.
I think Melmoth's description of Wilde's agony isn't meant to make us feel for Wilde, but that it is a meditation on death, an exercise in detachment.
On a broader structural level, having an important writer creates a connection with Going Home and Form & Void later on (with Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway). By the way, they all are writers with a specific relationship with sexuality. Sim didn't choose them because of their merits as writers, but because they were relevant from a psychological/cultural/sociological point of view.
What is actually very interesting in Melmoth is the choice of using Oscar Wilde, because another version of Oscar Wilde was already present in the comic, and mostly so in Jaka's Story, which came just before Melmoth. Unlike what is stated in the video, this is not unrelated to the plot; on the contrary it prepares the major twist of events waiting the reader in the Mothers and Daughters storyline.
Now, in Jaka's Story, that version of Oscar Wilde becomes an internal narrator (he is the voice of the retelling of Jaka's early life). The mix of Sim's narrating voice and that of his version of Oscar Wilde created a "ladder": we now have a sub-narrator. It is at that point, that the *real* Oscar Wilde enters the story.
Shortly later, in Reads, we will witness Dave Sim himself emerge out of a triangulation of framed internal narrators. One of them is Dave Sim's version of Oscar Wilde's version of Dave Sim, an extension of the ladder we first saw in Jaka's Story, where we had Dave Sim's version of Oscar Wilde.
I'm afraid from this point on this video series will become quite useless, as Strange Brain Parts thinks himself in the position of judging (and judging harshly!) the latter half of Cerebus without having really understood it. He says that the plot originally conceived was vague and then developed by Sim just before the comicbook were about to be drawn, but that misses a crucial point. Sim had a precise plot, then, after some years, following a determinate event, he decided to change it. And he decided to change it with a determinate rationale and to fully justify it in the inside-world logic of Cerebus.
I wrote at the beginning that I think Melmoth's description of Wilde's agony isn't meant to make us feel for Wilde as to present us with a meditation on death. The fact that Wilde becomes Sim's Trojan horse in the story, we can see that Sim here is meditating on his own death, creating a distance between himself and the reader because of the very detachment he's able to let transpire through the page. This is also a prefiguration of the detached way in which Cerebus' final moments will be portrayed.
The very idea of creating a work that covers a whole life is a form of meditation on death.
Wow! Nice review and recap of the story. Have you done more of these videos on the cerebus stories?
[Engagement]
[response]
@@StrangeBrainParts [ Pee pee ]
Damn, how did I miss this video dropping.
I think there's a very good possibility that Dave Sim had another mental health episode around this time. He was institutionalized for a time, early in Cerebus' run. I think he had another mental break that's perhaps gone undiagnosed to this day.
Melmoth andJaka’s story is what makes Cerebus a true work of art!
Jake's Story to me is the best saga. Sad how that story presents Jaka as a tragic figure only for Sim to imply years later that she was at fault and that he hinted it (he didn't hint to it btw).
@@RockoEstalon I just see Jaka’s story as a beautiful coming of age story. And seeing Sim later with Reads being able to tell that.
@@31LaschG What I mean is that he implies Jaka was 100% and selfish while Rick 100% right and some sort of altruist guy, and we're talking about the guy who gave personal information of Jaka's trauma to a writer.
@@RockoEstalon i have not considered that and you are probably quite correct! What I did was read Cerebus up until Reads and from then onwards I just thought about finishing the series. And I am sorry to say I will not not reread that part of the series. And I would say that I liked the character of Rick, but given the choice between of him and Jaka
@@31LaschG I can't think of a single character in the series I dislike (how it was written I mean), I just don't get from them what Sim says he intended and I completely understand not wanting to reread. The finall 100 issues of Cerebus were hell to me.
Felt like a 10 issue build up to a punchline, when they wheel him past Cerebus at the end.
Yay another cerebus video. Funny fact I just bought the book with the thumbnail picture last week
❤ great videos always it's interesting to hear what your opinion is on different Comics I like service but I like the early days I don't really care much for this I know that the author was fighting with his wife and that's Mary was why he sticks Us in there
Is it possible that Sim was anachronistically suggesting that Oscar Wilde was a victim of feminism, persecuted by society for the crime of rejecting women as romantic partners? A big stretch and inaccurate, obviously, but maybe this was the thematic connection he was attempting to make.
I mean...possibly? The series was headed in that direction and, as shown in the video, it was a topic on his mind at the time. But I genuinely have no idea.
The afterwords of those issues talked about how sad it was that a man was prosecuted just for who he liked. Don't think he though about it that way, specially when later he started the whole "Feminist-Homosexualist Axis" conspiracy theory about "the gays" being in cahoots with feminists.
I’ve always liked the weird tangents and seemingly pointless interludes in Cerebus, its such a strange and beautiful world, but also boring and frustrating.
I probably have a less harsh view of this story, because I read it in the phonebooks. While I can appreciate that Melmoth was probably extremely excrutiating for the fans that were reading it month-to-month, that's part of what I appreciate about it (and about the original die-hard fans that kept it going) -that a pair of somewhat obscure comic book creators would dare to create something thing this challenging and not immediately gratifying is itself a bold statement, on par with nothing else at the time -if nothing else, I can't help but respect that.
And this was just a taste of what was to come, both with Sim delving into historical (or pseudo historical) subject matter, and with him testing the waters of his audience's patience. While it may be one of the driest parts of the story, it's actually far from the most tedious.
In the phonebooks, the pacing is actually very effective at establishing emotional weight and tone for what will come after, even if it isn't as thematically integrated.
What little I remember of this episode, was that I was not paying much attention to Cerebus by now. I don’t remember if it was Reads, where he had a long diatribe about a comic book author, whose wife had eaten his brain, but that was the last straw and I stopped reading then.
That was during the Reads portion of the Mothers & Daughters story. Which takes place after Melmoth.
The covers are great. It's a shame those were not fit into the phonebook editions.
Something about Melmoth is touching to me despite its otherwise bizarre conclusion. Maybe it's just the fact I share an attachment to Wilde with Sim that many readers don't, but I feel the weight of it in a way you simply don't
That's fair! I never try to talk someone out of enjoying something, even if it doesn't connect with me.
I enjoy when the Ceerbus comic was not always about Cerebus. I'm going to pull that into my comic Aartie the Aardvark. Aartie will be the main character but not always the focus of story arcs. I want to follow other characters around Aartie. I don't know if I'll bring in a historical-literary figure like Oscar Wilde in mine (only time will tell).
I sigh and start to clench my teeth.
My older brother was also into this comic.I could not for the life of me figure out why.I read at least a dozen of the early issues and just saw this as a cerebral complete waste of time.mine.It's interesting how you explain the whole thing but I shouldn't need a PHD to enjoy a comic book.
As an adjunct or complement to the Cerebus videos, will you at some point be doing an exploration of Sim behind the scenes? I could look it up elsewhere of course -- but being on this channel is a guarantee that I'd watch it. (Your narration style is fantastic and I really dig the little barbed personal opinions you throw in at times.)
EDIT: Sorry!! I'm not implying, with the parenthetical, that you're mean-spirited -- far from it! It's the pithy cutting through of the nonsense that I enjoy. Stay safe and all the things!
Strange Brain Parts has covered the controversies of Dave Simin a past video, as well as some of the things that were going on in Sim’s life at the time in earlier Cerebus book review videos.
Don't worry! I took no offence whatsoever to your comment. And, you're not wrong in your assessment. :)
As pointed out by @jikorijo4526, my very first Cerebus video covers a lot of the behind the scenes stuff and the history of the series. I've linked it below:
ua-cam.com/video/-e0okB5imP4/v-deo.html
I don’t think there are any parallels. I think this was just a “tangent” if you will, as Sim was won’t to do. Beautifully done, mind you, but I don’t think there’s any point trying to read something into the larger narrative, since there isn’t one.
I love u thx
It's insane how long conservatives comic fans have been getting triggered by feminism.
It's ironic that if you take read Cerebus from the first issue up to Jaka's Story, you would think Dave would be sympathetic with Feminism. Yet is the same person who wrote "Women Reads Minds".
If an adaptation of Cerebus was ever made - and it won’t I know - then I think you’d have to portray the downfall of Sims as well, as a character study of a descent into, for lack of a better word, madness. The parallels between him and his creation’s journey are too striking to ignore, tho that could be really hackneyed I guess.
Plus, I say all this as someone who has never read the comic and am only going off what I’ve seen in these videos. So in most likelihood, I’m way off in my assertions.
There is a Cerebus adaptation, made in 3D. Looks horrible and I don't think it got good reviews.
You should check Cerebus up to issue 200 (It's hard to recommend the latter part, not only for the latent misoginy and homophobia, but also because it's just not a good story), and then read the last two or three issues when he dies.
High Society, Church and State and Jaka's Story are masterpieces, and I still haven't seen a battle scene in a comic that surpases Cerebus vs Cirin.
Also it might be ironic, but Dave is one of the best male writters I have seen writing female characters, despite the comtempt for them he admitted having in his "gospel".
Why does Oscar Wilde look like George Plimpton?
ngl cerebus reminds me of Rayman bruh
Sim's math's way off. If it cost a Mom 10,000.00 a year for day care, there's no way it would save money for the government to pay women 1,000.00 a week (=52,000 a year) to stay home with their kids!
He's just making up numbers to sound "sociological".
Oh dear the next one is the train crash we've all be bracing for, isn't it?
love that you brought up Ivan illych. I find I always bring that up when I talk to someone about this story
Yes, absolutely. All of it.
And as a side issue, isn’t it ludicrous that because of what are perceived to be misogynistic ideas, and may well be precisely that, Sim (and to a far lesser extent Gerhard, but possibly true anyway) are now apparently literal comic pariahs. I’m sure Sim himself would agree but perhaps never state it this way: so what? So he’s not a feminist. What’s the big deal? So he explores that in ever more detailed ways? So what? It’s an incredible series. And yet his UA-cam channel gets what - thirty or forty hits per video. This is obviously wrong.
Despite everything (and to be frank, I personally think he’s brilliant and could care less, but not everyone’s the same) he SHOULD be lauded as one of comic’s finest creators. That he’s not means - well maybe that’s largely his own fault? Sure. But also, I guess, his stories DESERVE loads of attention, and if you don’t know why - good, you’ll enjoy finding out why.
Yes he’s (supposedly) a misogynist. Is he actually? And is that even important anyway since his work (and Gerhard’s, especially) is So Damn Good.
I hope this series gets seriously reappraised soon, and he’s rewarded financially because of it? That’s what I HOPE.
I don’t think this is radical thinking.