Minds

Back to Cerebus. Although I know Minds is not the final instalment in the graphic novel (we're a long way from 300) it could be. It answers many of the questions that have been posed throughout the run of the series, and it also gives the reader more revelations than any previous collection has. In his introduction Dave states that he revealed some things about the character that he'd kept secret for nearly 20 years, and even wondered part way through where did he go now?

It opens where Reads finished, with Cirin and Cerebus still hurtling through space on the platform with the throne on it. Cirin finds out that Cerebus believes George is Tarim. According to Cirin he isn't. His real name is Belinus Two Tongues, and he was banished to the rock on which he resides for attempting usurp Terim's throne.

Every time Cerebus attempts to one up Cirin with his view of Tarim, she shouts him down. Cerebus himself knows he isn't Most Holy and his theological knowledge is no match for Cirin's, so this is an argument he's never going to win, and besides Cirin will twist every point he makes around to fit her own view of things.

They struggle over the throne, and it is smashed by a rock. They try to attack each other, but are prevented from doing so by an unbreakable invisible wall between them. Then the platform they are standing on splits down the middle. Cirin shouts at Cerebus that this is his punishment to float aimlessly through space. I'm not really sure how she worked out that it was Cerebus' punishment, because she's in the same boat.

Cerebus relives episodes through his life, an encounter with a bully, how he found out he was a hermaphrodite, stealing his mother's kitchen knife, his father finding him in the market square saying he was the son of Tarim and preaching, taking him to the wizard. There are also parallels made here between Cerebus and Jesus Christ. Cerebus' father is a carpenter and doesn't understand his son. He also doesn't seem to have noticed that he's an aardvark, the only unusual thing he sees about Cerebus is that he's got big ears. So this was how he came to be a magician's apprentice. I still think 'little' Cerebus is drawn as incredibly cute, too.

Cerebus then has a circular conversation with Tarim. He alternately praises, insults, argues and renounces the god. This continues until a pie hits him in the side of the head and a new voice enters the conversation. This newcomer says his name is Dave and he created Cerebus.

So Dave Sim breaks through the fourth wall and has a long conversation with his creation. Throughout the course of this conversation readers find out about Cirin's origins and how her legions took over. The aardvark who calls herself Cirin is in fact Cirin's lieutenant; Serna, and took over from Cirin, imprisoning her old mentor. Cirin's unusualness is also behind the enveloping, face covering garb that the Cirinist's wear. It covers most of the face and hides her true appearance from people.

Dave also goes through Cerebus' story. He goes into the cult of aardvark worship that the Pigts practiced and says that had Cerebus' altered the course of his own life. He created Elrod and the Roach himself. They are manifestations of parts of his own being.

Dave is the reason Cerebus can never be with Jaka. Actually he's not, but Cerebus' very nature won't allow him to be with Jaka, not successfully. Dave shows Cerebus a number of possible futures with Jaka and they all end badly.

Cerebus accepts what Dave is saying, that he's a manifestation of Dave's mind, and therefore Dave will do what he wants with him. However he refused to acknowledge that he can't influence the outcome, and believes that he can change and therefore make Dave change his future. Dave agrees to let Cerebus try and drops him back into Estarcion for the next book; Guys.

Minds is one book where I think the format of having it all contained within the one volume works better than it's original form. It really needs to be read as the one book for it to have a proper impact. I can't remember reading this in the comic form, but I did, because I know was still collecting them as they came out at this point, but reading Minds that way would have made for an extremely disjointed experience.

Artistically Dave pulled out every trick in his bag of them. The style switches from page to page, bit by bit. Nearly everything he'd done in previous volumes appears in some form in Minds. It's an extraordinary achievement, very hard to do and totally revolutionary. Even as an independent without the strictures imposed on him by one of the bigger companies putting Minds together would have been a huge ask, and I think everyone involved from Dave and Gerhard, right down to the printer deserves accolades for what they produced with Minds. As a comic book or graphic novel (I think the term was in pretty popular use by this stage) it is a genuine experience and should be admired.

Reads

Reads could possibly be the most challenging book of Cerebus I've ever attempted to review. It's actually a bit of a challenge to read it in the first place. In this case it not being broken up into bite sized issue length chapters is a definite strength. I can't remember reading it as it came out, I know I did, because I was still collecting the comic at this point, but I can't recall it. I know reading Reads issue by issue month by month would have been a deeply unsatisfying and confusing experience. Reads, to me, is designed to be read as a single book. It's another example of Dave pushing the boundaries of the medium he was working in.

Dave actually describes Reads best in his introduction: Reads is a mixture of autobiography, a meditation on the traditional role of the creator in a capitalistic society, the nature of creativity itself, a re-examination of the conclusions reached at the end of Church & State, and a big fight.

He never actually says who the characters of Victor Reid and Viktor Davis are other than to say that they were fascinating and challenging companions.

Reads is 3 stories, that of Reads author Victor Reid, the continuing story of Cerebus and the story of a creator/artist/author called Viktor Davis. I'll try and break it down that way.

First we encounter Victor Reid. Victor is a moderately successful author of the Reads that are the main opiate of the masses in Cirinist controlled Estarcion. When the concept of Reads were first introduced in the book by Weisshaupt I always saw them as trashy romance novels or pulp books, but in this book it is obvious that they are comics. The story of the hapless Victor is largely that of a clueless author who is seduced into selling his creative soul to a heartless publisher in order to make more money and once he's in, he can't get out. It's largely a series of observations on the comics industry at the time in which the book was written.

Sandwiched between, in and around the stories of the two Vic(k)tors is the story of Cerebus. It picks up where Women left off with Po, Astoria and Cerebus confronting Cirin in the cathedral. Po semonises on the nature of the 4 people in the cathedral and the nature of aardvarks in a human dominated society. There's something different about all the aardvarks, but at this stage Cerebus has the ascendancy, mainly because he's a trained warrior, armed with a sword and can kill everyone in the place if he wants to. At times, mainly due to the way he was occasionally drawn I wondered about Po's gender. Cirin is female, Cerebus is male, was Po either or both? I'd discover the answer later.

Po leaves and the other 3 look at each other. Astoria tells Cerebus that it will not be necessary to kill her as she is also leaving soon. Before she does she comes out with some stunning revelations. Cerebus is a hermaphrodite. What bothers Cirin about Cerebus is that she believes he can impregnate himself and possibly produce an entire race of aardvarks. She's had a child and he was human in every respect. Astoria did not fall pregnant when Cerebus raped her, but as she's never carried a child before and no one knows if Cerebus has fathered any, there's no way of telling if either or both of them are infertile or if it was just one of those things. Astoria seems fed up with controlling things and trying to gain power, she tells Cirin and Cerebus to play nice and suggests that maybe Cirin and Cerebus try having sex, then leaves the building.

Enter the Roach. He's now dressed in a robe and referring to himself as Kay Sarah Sarah. I never knew if this was another character or an extension of the Sandman parody. Elrod is still done up as Snuff, so it's possible that this was a continuation of the Sandman parody. Readers discovered the truth of Elrod. How he could keep popping up no matter how definitively he seemed to have been killed. He wasn't actually real, he was only kept alive by belief in his own existence. Upon hearing this he popped out of existence with a loud POIT, leaving the Kay Sarah Sarah incarnation of the Roach standing on a platform floating in space.

Back in the cathedral Cerebus and Cirin fight. Initially, having a sword Cerebus has the upper hand and it looks like he's going to cut the leader of the church into pieces. Cirin fights back and manages to get the sword, she cuts off Cerebus' ear and that's about when the entire cathedral collapses around them and they are both clinging to the throne and the platform it sits on when it lifts off and floats towards, you guessed it...the Moon!

The 3rd part of Reads is extraordinary. The story of the successful Reads author Viktor Davis. Part autobiography, part political treatise, part musing on what is and isn't real. Rambling internal monologue, Talk about the book, it's history, it's present and its possible future. It came across as something like the Ulysses of comics. The character of Viktor Davis as written by Dave Sim, absolutely fucked with the readers heads the entire way through it. I don't know if I totally understood what was being said, it's hard to say if anyone did, but it was an entertaining look into someone's thought process.

Inreresting to see if Dave can pull this all back on track in Minds.

Women

Women is the 2nd book in Cerebus' Mothers & Daughters story arc, which was begun in Flight.

I tend to fly blind a bit here. I did read Women when it first came out, but I only read it as the issues, never cracked open the phone book until I read it for this and consequently can remember very little of it. Stylistically Women is about as far from what a standard comic was thought of at the time as you could get. There are pages of writing from two fictional treatises, normal comic book panels, full page pictures, other pages where one picture takes up the bulk of the space with the writing on one side and there are also large pages with one picture dominating and partial faces around it talking. It's not the easiest of things to read, but then Cerebus never followed any of the rules for writing graphic novels. I tend to think Dave made up most of these as he went.

Women follows a few storylines. There's Cirn, Astoria, the Roach, Cerebus, the lives of the people in the conquered city of Iest. The stories are broken up by written quotes from two manifestoes: Astoria's Kevillist Origins and Cirin's The New Matriarchy. In his introduction to the book Dave Sim explains his idea behind the theories of Kevillism as opposed to Cirinism and this is also in part why the 4 smaller books that make up the whole of Mothers & Daughters is called that. Cirinists are Mothers and believe that only women who are mothers have the right to rule, where as Kevillists are Daughters and believe that power should belong to ALL women, not just mothers. At least that's what Dave, Cirin and Astoria seem to be saying to me.

After being rejected by Blossom the Roach develops a new persona known as Swoon, this is a parody of Neil Gaiman's Dream from his ground breaking graphic novel The Sandman. As a result of this persona, the Roaches regular sidekick; Elrod becomes Swoon's transvestite 'sister' Snuff (a based on Dream's sister Death from The Sandman. I haven't read all of The Sandman, so I don't know know if Death was actually a transvestite or not. I assume not, but Dave had to do it to make Elrod; a male character, fit as Death; s female character). The Roach appears as 2 versions of Swoon, one is the black eyed version and the other is clad in the helmet and hose that Death wore in the early days of The Sandman, I assume this was because the version with the helmet and breathing hose just looks funnier. After having some truly bizarre dreams Swoonroach eventually breaks out towards the end of the book parodying all sorts of Roach characters including: Pittroach, Maxxroach, Spawnroach, Sabretoothroach, Laytonroach, Marvel U.K Roach and others. Some referenced characters, others were authors, publishers or concepts, you really had to be into comics to get 90% of the jokes. They were extraordinarily panels to draw, total chaos and unbridled insanity. I have no idea where the Roach will go from this.

Cirin's story mostly concerned her trying to assert her control over the city, obsess about Astoria and Cerebus and try to create a giant golden globe to attempt her own ascension. I found it rather amusing that her generals were called Greer, Steinem and Dworkin after 3 prominent feminists. Cirin survives an assassination attempt, but loses all semblance of mercy and quite possibly the people. This will affect her chances of ascension severely.

Astoria breaks her arm while being taken to Cirin, and the injury in fact mirrors one that Cirin herself suffered during the course of the book's events. She is on her way to the church where Cirin is, possibly flirting with capture and death by doing so when the people start to gather around her and refer to her as a messiah or saviour.

Cerebus finds his way to an inn, the same one where the McGrew brothers have been and holes himself up there. His intentions aren't clear, but judging by his alcohol intake he seems to want to drink himself to death. He emerges from the alcohol induced haze twice, once in a trancelike state, where he causes a section of the mountain above the city to rise up and smash through Cirin's headquarters (that's how she broke her arm) by lifting and lowering his sword. While's asleep he has dreams, he has one of being lectured by a young Cerebus and I can't help but think that child Cerebus is extraordinarily cute, the old Cerebus that lectures him in another dream is less cute. He also dreams about The Elf. In the dream she claims that she's the fake Elf, the real one looks totally different and was nowhere near as much fun and couldn't exist outside the Ambassador Suite of The Regency, she disappeared. The Elf also says that Cerebus created her from his mind, so in some weird way that makes Cerebus' her Daddy. Cerebus has huge problems with this concept, made ickier by the fact that the Elf said he created her to make her be his perfect daughter, she's the girl next door to him when he was growing up that he had a crush on, she's Jaka, she's Katrina, she's Doris, all these girls that Cerebus has had in his life. Cerebus does deny it, but it's probably true. Sigh. The second time Cerebus emerges from his alchoholic haze he starts flying. Flying above the city and knocking out the spikes on the mountain top. He touches down in front of Astoria and draws his sword back to kill her.

While much of this has been going on Death (not the one from The Sandman, who is now Elrod and called Snuff) has been stalking the streets of Iest. Before Cerebus can deliver the killing blow to Astoria Death appears in between the two and removed his hood. Death is Suenteus Po! Po found it necessary to adopt a disguise. I thought Po was long dead, but apparently not. With the appearance of Po three messiahs have appeared to the people of Iest. The thing that surprised me about Po was his size. He's a white haired, lanky old aardvark, but he's really tall. Because Cerebus is 3 feet tall it's always really hard to guage height around him, because next to him everyone is tall, but Po towers over Astoria. I'd put him at a similar height to the Roach and he's always been taller ever since Weisshaupt put him in the platform boots back in the Captain Cockroach days. Po puts his arms around Cerebus and Astoria and leads them into the cathedral to meet their 'hostess'. I was unsure if he was referring to Terim or Cirin.

Flight

I was surprised and a little delighted when I opened up Flight and discovered that my copy was both signed and numbered. How I managed to get one of the signed, numbered, first editions I have no idea. Just lucky I guess.

The story begins with Cerebus fighting for his life against the Cirinists. When the first rumours of the battle reach Cirin, who is busily burning books with her assistant Clarinda (I wasn’t sure if this was the same Clarinda who attends Mrs Thatcher or whether it’s just a common Cirinist name), she refuses to believe it because how could a 3 foot tall creature take out 8 of her crack soldiers? What’s more impressive is that he did it with one arm, because he refused to let go of Missy. The aardvark’s struggle draws attention from the local townsfolk and they rally behind him. The initial rebellion is put down hard and quickly, but before they can catch Cerebus he disappears.

Sparked by Cerebus’ actions normalroach remembers all his past incarnations and who used or inspired him and changes again. This time he’s Punisherroach (a take on the Marvel vigilante The Punisher, how Dave never got served with more cease and desist orders I do not know). The Punisherroach is armed with pearl handled, semi-automatic crossbows and they’re also remarkably accurate, or so he says. When he went into battle against the Cirinists I fully expected them to not work and for him to be massacred, that’s generally what happens to the Roach. This time the crossbows did work and he became a one man wrecking crew as far as the Cirinists were concerned and a rallying point for the fed up populace. Elrod still wearing his roach suit takes charge of the new saviour and leads him a brot…cleansing centre and introduces him to a pros…spiritual advisor called Blossom. The Roaches encounter with Blossom causes him to morph quickly into Loboroach (Lobo), Cableroach (Cable), Venomroach (Spiderman’s evil alter ego Venom) and finally Ghostroach (Ghostrider) before becoming a milder, slightly more lucid version of the Punisherroach persona. As an amusing aside the Cirinist commander who delivered Iest to Cirin was called Normina Swartzkof.

The Cirinists are starting to fragment as two of the most powerful members of the church (Mrs Thatcher and Mrs Kopp) jockey for position and Cirin herself becomes obsessed with the still imprisoned Astoria because of her knowledge of Cerebus.

Readers get to see a number of other characters who have featured throughout the book: Kcorr the mad ruler of Imesh, Death as he was portrayed way back in the early days, The Elf (yay!), she’s still at the Regency looking for the fake Elf, Dan and Drew McGirt who are not faring well in a Cirinist controlled Iest, we see Posey’s sad, final fate. I felt sorry for him, he never hurt anyone and just tried to keep himself alive, he did believe in Cerebus, though and it was ultimately this faith that led to his death, George who is arguing with himself about just what his actual purpose is, Lord Julius, who spends his part of the book trying to dodge a Cirinist assassin and is saved by his assistant, even the Andy Warhol inspired artist makes an appearance.

The Pigt story started back in issue #3 seems to come to a head as they arm and march on Iest, but when the omens don’t quite work out as they expected argue amongst each other and decimate their own forces.

While all this is going on Cerebus is back in the Seventh Sphere. He won’t be misdirected by Po this time. He’s going up, exactly where up will get him he doesn’t really care, he’s going to do it. He eventually ascends to the Eighth Sphere and comes face to face with Suenteus Po…and he’s an aardvark! Po is the 3rd aardvark. The legendary mystic has lived through a number of incarnations, it’s not clear whether he is an aardvark in all of them, though. It’s not even clear if he can exist on any other plane other than the ones he appears to Cerebus in anymore. He explains his life to Cerebus and also cautions him against believing what George told him as he’s not the most reliable or impartial of commentators, no matter what he claims.

Just as Cirin and Astoria are about to go head to head Cerebus returns to this sphere of existence with a loud POIT!

There were two passages that stayed with me from Flight. One was Posey’s death. That really rocked me. The other was one part of the aftermath of Cerebus’ rebellion, just after he disappeared. The fact that a 3 foot tall creature fighting with one arm could kill eight of the previously unbeatable Cirinist troops and give people hope was not good for the controlling regime. They had to quarantine the entire section of the city that had seen it. Cirin gave the order to move all mothers and children under 5 out of the area and kill everyone remaining. Plague was the pretext used. There’s a moving encounter of a young girl who doesn’t believe the plague excuse, she has to see her mother and baby brother moved out and pitifully asks her mother to tell her brother when he’s older that he once had a sister, she then willingly goes to her execution. Despite their rhetoric the Cirinists were no better than the equally repressive regime that they replaced.

Endgame

Astoria's trial continues, all that remains is for Cerebus to pass sentence on Astoria.

The chapter opens with Posey dashing back and forth bringing water to Cerebus. Gerhard's beautiful intricate backgrounds dominate and really bring the interior of the cathedral to life.

Astoria appears to have lost her mind and is speaking nonsense. Cerebus orders her gagged. When it comes time to pass sentence, and the only sentence can be execution Cerebus cannot bring himself to order it. In echoes of Pontius Pilate, Cerebus washes his hands of the matter and tells Powers if he wants Astoria killed then he can order it. However by the rules of the chuch whoever orders the execution of a Pope killer would then become Pontiff. Cerebus retires to consider the matter.

The action resumes with the messenger bird reaching it's intended destination. It is received by a black veiled servant of Cirin. She takes the message to her mistress. Readers cannot see Cirin, only her thick bandaged fingers. The message is the signal for the Cirinists to begin their invasion of Iest. Those pages are bordered with a design of leaves twining up slender columns.

The final page is Cirin. Because of her veil we can't see all of her face, but we don't need to, to know that Cirin is an aardvark!

I can remember when I first read this chapter I nearly fell of the chair when I got to that last page. I don't know what I was expecting the reveal to be, but that wasn't it. The game just got real interesting.

Swords of Cerebus #5: Champion, Fluroc, She-Devil in the Shadows, Mind Game

The opening page of Champion is classic Cerebus, a close up of the aardvark's extremely annoyed face, dripping wet. Cerebus is cursing Lord Julius as the horse he was given to ride out of Palnu on broke a leg, forcing him to drag 8 bags of gold through some foul weather. The fact is that Cerebus doesn't have to carry the entire 8 bags, he could bury 7 of them somewhere, get to a town, hire a wagon and team and tools, dig them up, and go back in style. Unfortunately the earth pig's mind doesn't work that way, if you have money you hang on to it. Cerebus has made and lost far too many fortunes to leave something like that to chance. He comes across a hovel, offers the penniless inhabitants some of his gold to leave it, and decides to wait out the weather there. While relaxing in the hovel, and planning out his next move there is a knock at the door. Standing outside are 2 T'Gitan mercenaries who claim to be part of an army attacking Palnu.

Cerebus lets them in, and meets Gudre and his son Stromm. Their mortal enemy is Palnu's heroic general Commander Krull, the whacko who recites his own memoirs to a personal assistant at all times. Dave admitted to watching a lot of sitcoms during the writing of this, and said that Krull was a cross between Conan (who he certainly resembles facially) and the insane Colonel Flagg from M*A*S*H. The reason for the T'Gitan's animosity was that Krull ordered Stromm's tongue be torn out. Although it didn't do much for poor Stromm, it benefited his father, given the boy's size and musculature development his lack of being able to vocalise enabled Gudre to pass his son off as Stromm God of Thunder, and son of the one true God Tarim, which meant a large number of T'Gitan mercenaries flocked to his cause. Meeting Cerebus also helps Gudre. Cerebus never passes up an opportunity to make money, and he's amoral enough to turn on a former ally without giving it a second thought. Gudre's target is the Palnan trading city of Fluroc, which is guarded by Krull. Krull may be an egomaniac, but he's also a talented warrior. Cerebus hatches a plot to take Krull out of the picture, and allow the T'Gitan mercenaries to take over an undefended Fluroc.

Fluroc finds Cerebus and the mercenaries holed up in the now deserted town, they having killed most of the inhabitants. The main joke in this issue was how many different ways the T'Gitans could mispronounce Cerebus' name. The T'Gitan accent was germanic, it having come to Dave while watching reruns of Hogans Heroes. My personal favourite was how Graus, the most prominent mercenary said the name, making it sound like 'Zerbutz.' I can remember reading the first page, and a bit with Graus repeating the name thinking 'What the hell is he talking about?' until it finally dawned on me that this was how he said Cerebus. Graus tells Cerebus how the Stromm legend got started, and Cerebus admits to himself grudgingly that Gudre is one smart operator. The T'Gitans are thrown into a panic when a trading caravan arrives at Fluroc. Cerebus tells the traders that the city was overrun by plague, and he is one of the few survivors. He convinces the traders that having entered the city they have now contracted the plague, and can only be saved by taking some of a liquid that he has. He of course is not going to part with his only defence against the deadly disease cheaply. This allows him to take the merchants for nearly everything they have in exchange for a flask of what is most probably water or T'Gitan beer. Speaking with the mercenaries, and seeing how incredibly gullible they are he starts to think that maybe Gudre wasn't all that smart after all.

Cerebus took Graus to Togith where he intended to sell the jewelry he had conned from the merchants to raise an army of pikemen to continue the attack on Palnu. While there, Graus became entranced by a fortune teller called Perce. Cerebus found that if he could obtain another golden owl like the one he had been given by the traders in Fluroc he could raise his army. Contacts told Cerebus that a man named Hortne may be able to assist. Once he arrived at the tavern where Hortne lodged he found it in uproar, largely due to some menace that was in Hortne's apartment. Always the skeptic Cerebus investigated and came face to face with Red Sophia! Although this female warrior looked and dressed like Sophia, Cerebus decided she could not be the wizard's daughter. For one she hardly said a word, and Sophia was rarely ever lost for one of those, and the other thing that she was a better fighter than Cerebus remembered Sophia being. Once past her he discovers that Henrot (Sophia's father) was behind it. The female warrior outside his inner sanctum is a construct he devised to give himself some peace and quiet. As a favour to Cerebus, Henrot gives him a magical twin to the golden owl, which will disappear in 6 months. Graus is still with Perce, who drugs Cerebus, and sends the T'Gitan back to Gudre with a letter supposedly from the aardvark. No reader knew who Perce was or what her game was, but we were about to find out. Perce was the first Cirinist we ever saw.

Dave was becoming rather interested in artistic games when he put out Mind Game. Legendary comic book artist Neal Adams had on more than one occasion hidden a giant drawing of the head of one of the characters in what he was working on amongst the art work. Dave decided that with 19 issues of Cerebus under his belt it was time to stretch himself artistically, and do something similar. If you cut up the pages of Mind Game and reassemble them the right way you get a picture of Cerebus. Having virtually no artistic talent whatsoever I can't even imagine how hard this is to do, and create a coherent story around it at the same time.

I may be a little over effusive with the praise there. Mind Game isn't the most coherent of stories, actually it's downright weird, but it's still incredibly important in the development of the book and the narrative. Mind Game came out about a year after Dave had been hospitalised by his mother and wife following several days of taking LSD, that's where the 300 issue run idea came to him and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mind Game was also born about then.

The entire story takes place inside Cerebus' mind. The drug that Perce gave him was mind altering, and also put him in a state bordering comatose. He was speaking to Perce and someone she referred to as Mother Wenda. Perce and Wenda were both Cirinists. The Cirinists were a group of ultra feminists who followed a woman calling herself Cirin, and believed that the dominant God figure was actually called Terim and was female. They were in opposition to the male dominated church of Tarim and the hedonistic Illusionists; led by another shadowy character called Suenteus Po. Readers also met Po for the first time in this issue. I have to admit I liked Po, he was infuriating, but very funny. Exactly what it is about Cerebus that piques the interest of the Cirinists is not explained, although it is hinted that it could have something to do with him being an aardvark. Using Po's advice, and his own intelligence Cerebus manages to divert the Cirinist's attention from him and onto a group of helpless Illusionists, although the issue ends on a massive cliffhanger with Cerebus passed out face down in a sea of blackness, without Wenda from the outside, and Po from within being able to elicit any response from him. Gulp.