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''Cerebus'' (;〔(Interview with Dave Sim ) Sim says the name Cerebus at 3:58 into the interview〕 also ''Cerebus the Aardvark'') is a comic book series created by Canadian cartoonist Dave Sim, which ran from December 1977 until March 2004. The title character of the 300-issue series was an anthropomorphic aardvark who takes on a number of roles throughout the series—barbarian, prime minister and Pope among them. The series stands out for its experimentation in form and content, and for the dexterity of its artwork, especially after background artist Gerhard joined in with the 65th issue. As the series progressed, it increasingly became a platform for Sim's controversial beliefs. The 6000-page story is a challenge to summarize. Beginning as a parody of sword and sorcery comics, it moved into seemingly any topic Sim wished to explore—power and politics, religion and spirituality, gender issues, and more. It progressively became more serious and ambitious than its parodic roots—what has come to be dubbed "Cerebus Syndrome". Sim announced early on that the series would end with the death of the title character. The story has a large cast of characters, many of which began as parodies of characters from comic books and popular culture. Starting with the ''High Society'' storyline, the series became divided into self-contained "novels", which form parts of the overall story. The ten "novels" of the series have been collected in 16 books, known as "Cerebus phonebooks" for their resemblance to telephone directories. At a time when the series was about 70% completed, celebrated comic book writer Alan Moore wrote, "Cerebus, as if I need to say so, is still to comic books what Hydrogen is to the Periodic Table."〔http://www.linkworthy.com/Moore/Correspondence3.htm〕 ==Publication history== ''Cerebus'' was self-published by Sim under his Aardvark-Vanaheim, Inc. publishing banner. For the first few years the company's publisher was Deni Loubert, Sim's girlfriend (the two would marry and divorce during the comic's run). 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''). Inspired in some ways by the Steve Gerber character Howard the Duck, the earliest issues of ''Cerebus'' took the form of a parody of the sword and sorcery genre, particularly Conan the Barbarian. 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 every conceivable way. In 1979, Sim, who was at the time a frequent marijuana user, began using LSD, taking the drug with such frequency that he was eventually hospitalized.〔 (page 1 ), (page 3 )〕 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. With issue #65 Sim was joined by Gerhard; Gerhard's intricately rendered backgrounds became a visual hallmark of the comic. When Sim published the first ''Cerebus'' "phone book", a paperback collection of the ''High Society'' graphic novel (issues #26-50), he angered distributors — 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.〔(ComicCon )〕〔Coville, Jamie. ("Dave Sim Interview" ) Collector Times June 16, 2005〕 The decision was a financial windfall for Sim, however, grossing over $150,000 in sales ().〔 Sim became known for picking up hotel tabs for self-publishers and helping other self-publishers by paying for meals and limo service between stops.〔(Comicon board posting by Colleen Doran ) Colleen talks about Dave's support of self-publishers〕 Negotiations regarding DC buying ''Cerebus'' took place over the course of 1985 to 1988, offering $100,000 ( today) and 10% of all licensing and merchandising, which Sim rejected.〔 The series hit a personal sales record with issue #100 which, despite being a normal issue in the middle of a story arc, had a print run of 36,000 copies. Sales took a substantial drop over the next 50 issues, however, and Sim commented that the fact that readers could not simply "jump in" to ''Cerebus'', and had to read the entire series in order to be able to understand the current issue, was a major reason for the sales drop.〔 By the end of the 1980s, 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. "Jaka's Story", a tragic character study dealing with gender roles and the political suppression of art, is generally cited as the series' pinnacle of narrative achievement. Later issues of the series became highly personal and began to alienate many long-time fans, his female readers especially. Issue #186 (collected in ''Reads'') contained a lengthy prose section that was attacked by some readers and critics for what they perceived as overt misogyny, but which Sim describes as "anti-feminism". During this part of the story, the storyline consisted of a textual treatise written by Viktor Davis, a fictional "reads" author, interspersed with the main ''Cerebus'' storyline. In Davis' material, he refers to the "creative male light" and the "emotional female void", a reversal of the gender-based view of creation espoused by the Judge at the end of ''Church and State'' (namely, the "female light" being raped by the "male void" and shattering into the physical universe). As Sim himself says in an interview with ''The Comics Journal'', "''Cerebus'' #1-200 () the completion of the story. The yin and yang. The ultra-female reading. The ultra-male reading. I'm attaching an allegory to the Big Bang. You make up your mind which one's the pit and which one's the top of the mountain."〔(Dave Sim interviewed by Tom Spurgeon, excerpted from The Comics Journal #s 184 & 192 )〕 By the end of the series, the Void is again male and identified as God, and the Light is female, now identified with YHWH. Issue #186 was followed by an even harsher essay in the back of issue #265 called "Tangent", in which Sim identified a "feminist/homosexualist axis" that opposed traditional and rational societal values. This material appeared as Sim was retreating from public life and becoming more marginalized by his peers in the industry. Sim himself has appeared as a character in ''Cerebus'', most notably to berate the title character in the "Minds" story arc. A writer entering his own fictional universe is not an original idea either in comics or conventional writing (see Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in ''Fantastic Four'', Kurt Vonnegut's ''Breakfast of Champions'', Paul Auster's ''New York Trilogy'' and Grant Morrison's comic ''Animal Man'') for other examples of this type of metafiction, although he claims to have planned the encounter as early as 1979, more than a decade before it actually took place. 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 notorious 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 publisher of ''The Comics Journal'', a comics magazine published by Fantagraphics Books. Sim's religious beliefs heavily influenced the last third of ''Cerebuss storyline. Once an atheist, Sim became a believer in God while gathering research material for "Rick's Story". However, rather than following an established religion, Sim follows his own personal belief system cobbled together from elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,〔"Just to be clear on the subject of what I consider scripture: the Torah, that is, the Law and the Prophets as held by Orthodox Judaism (i.e. no Ruth, no Esther, no Daniel, no Job, no Song of Songs, etc.), the First Book of Moshe through to Malachi, the four Gospels, Acts and John's Apocalypse, and all of the Koran." Sim, Dave. (2007) ''Collected Letters Volume 2'', p. 90.〕 although he described himself in issue #8 of ''Following Cerebus'' as "mostly Muslim". A 2003 magazine interview describes Sim as reciting a prayer of his own devising five times a day (which was published in the back of issue #300), and as having sold much of his furniture to donate the money to charity as an act of religious asceticism. In an editorial contained in issue #297, Sim stated that he regards the production of ''Cerebus'' as of secondary importance to his religious practice. Sim's religious beliefs tie into his views on gender, and the bulk of the ''Cerebus'' storyline after "Guys" deals with this, especially "Rick's Story", "Latter Days", and "The Last Day". 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 37,000 copies.〔(【引用サイトリンク】archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20110722133331/http://spiltink.dreamhost.com/blogs/sequentialimages/sim/siminsatnightpg4.gif )〕 A new quarterly publication, ''Following Cerebus'', followed in August 2004, featuring correspondence, essays, and previously unpublished artwork from Sim, as well as interviews with other comic writers and artists. Sim was rumored as saying that, had he died or otherwise chosen not to complete ''Cerebus'' prior to issue 300, 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, since it was never put into effect; however, in a 1996 interview,〔''Wizard magazine #58, June 1996〕 having just broken the 200 issue barrier, Sim mentioned his wishes regarding ''Cerebus'', should he be prevented somehow from finishing his goal: "If something like that happens and I'm at mid-issue, the instructions are that the comic book gets printed with the rest of the pages blank. Look at the last page I drew because that's probably where the gods went 'No, I think we've just about had enough of this guy'". At the completion of the series, he directed that upon his and Gerhard's death, ''Cerebus'' would enter into the public domain. Effective 31 December 2006, Sim purchased Gerhard's share of the company. Sim has already granted a general license for other creators to use his characters in their own works, stating that he is trying to be consistent with his own appropriation of others' works.〔(CFG Archive of Newsarama discussion, Feb 6, 2008 )〕 In the spring of 2009, Sim launched the bimonthly series ''Cerebus Archive''. Despite the title, the series is primarily a retrospective on Sim's non-''Cerebus'' work prior to and concurrent with the ''Cerebus'' series; according to a note in Issue 1, however, the inclusion of ''Cerebus'' in the title requires him to include the character in some way, so the front covers of the first two issues published as of July 2009 feature Cerebus. After refusing for years to allow it to be translated (because he couldn't be sure of the accuracy of translations into languages he couldn't read), with Sim's permission several European publishers are now translating ''Cerebus''. In 2010, ''High Society'' was published in Spanish,〔(Alta Sociedad from Ponent Mon )〕 French, and Italian; and in 2011, ''Church & State Vol. I'' was published in Spanish.〔(Product page ) at (Ponent Mon )'s website〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cerebus the Aardvark」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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