The Judge

No, not the demon from Buffy Season 2, but the title of the first chapter of the 7th book of Church & State II. I said I'd try and do one Cerebus chapter a week and I'm going to try and hold to my word.

Cerebus is at long last on the moon. He jumps off the tower and crash lands on the moon. Once there he meets a large black suited balding man with a little moustache. First he tells Cerebus that with the stories about him and the fact that he's been on the moon for hundreds of thousands of years with no contact whatsoever he's rather disappointed by Cerebus' actual physical appearance. He was pulling for Weisshaupt.

He sets a few things straight right off. He's not Tarim. Exactly what he is and who he is remains unclear. He's had many names; the Man in the Moon, The Watcher (and there are some similarities between him and the Marvel comics character of that name), he's also been called George and that's what he became known to the fanbase as.

He rambles on about how he's seen the world for years upon countless years from the dinosaurs to a redwood civilization to Cerebus' here and now. He then answers Cerebus unasked questions.

1) Cerebus does not conquer the known world when he arrives back there. There's a great panel of a stricken looking Cerebus with a thought bubble containing a disintegrating map of the Aardvarkian Empire.

2) Fred, Ethel and the little fellow with the hair eventually enter Earth's gravitational field, but burn into a giant sprinkling of ash.

3) Cerebus is not in Vanaheim. He's on the moon; a nearly airless hunk of rock. George claims that Vanaheim, Heaven and Valhalla do not exist. I think at this point Dave was an atheist, he did later get faith of a sort, but when he wrote this it's pretty clear that he was an atheist.

Next will be Cerebus' 4th question and no doubt some sermonising from George, because that's what he does.