Some of you here have heard me talk about Dave Sim’s groundbreaking creation Cerebus the Aardvark on this blog. I’ve even had Cerebus cameo in Sunnyville and in the near future, I want to upgrade him to “special guest star” status.
Cerebus the Aardvark was a monthly comic book series from Canada that ran for 300 issues from 1977 to 2004. Early on, the series was a parody of sword & sorcery works like “Conan the Barbarian. As time marched on, it turned more serious. Dave Sim really pushed the limits of art and writing in the world of comics while also exploring themes like politics, religion, male-female relations and existentialism.
These comics were eventually collected into sixteen thick trade paperbacks. I own the first four volumes right now and plan to reread them once I finish reading Reid Fleming, World’s Toughest Milkman. This series is really one-of-a-kind and inspired a whole generation of creative geniuses out there. I’ve been using polyptychs myself like those found on the pages of Cerebus.
Are you intrigued by Dave Sim’s comics masterpiece? You can find the trade paperbacks at your friendly neighborhood comic book shop, your corner bookstore or your local library.
But what’s that? You can’t get Cerebus there. Well, you’re in luck and now we get to the point of this blog post. The entire saga of Cerebus is being put online FOR FREE one page at a time via the social media platform Tumblr. Check out Cerebus Online to read it! At the time of this writing (April 23, 2015), we are only up to somewhere in Cerebus #3. It will probably take a good twenty years for the series to be posted in its entirety.
So what are you waiting for? Go read Cerebus today!