Becoming Synonymous With Something Indescribable

Well one thing hadn't changed with the switch from Church & State to Church & State 2; the titles, they were still delightfully nonsensical. Dave doesn't actually call the books Church & State 1 & 2, he calls them both Church & State, I've added the 2 so as not to confuse readers and myself. Judging by the covers you could actually call them White and Black. The cover of 1 was predominantly white. The cover of 2 is mostly black, a picture of a fearful Cerebus walking across a carpet of what look like skeletons, holding a glowing black ball, he is surrounded by darkness.

The name of the first book of Church & State 2 is called Sacred Wars. This is an obvious allusion to Marvel's Secret Wars, which was a concept they had begun not long before this came out.

Cerebus ls laying somewhere in the lower city, when he's discovered by an outlandish figure wearing a black costume, with a picture of a cockroach on the chest. The Cootie is back. This time he's got up as Spiderman's dark alter ego; Venom, but he is undeniably Cerebus' old occasional ally and usual nemesis: The Cockroach. He's now involved in a crusade he refers to as the Sacred Wars, he often refers to it as the Secret Sacred Wars, mostly because no one other than the Bug can understand it. I saw this as another veiled insult thrown Marvel's way. I was almost out of collecting mainstream titles by this time, but I knew enough about The Secret Wars to understand that it was a desperate attempt by Marvel to move product. The storyline of The Secret Wars crossed into almost every title on the publisher's roster, which meant that particularly devoted fans would buy titles they did not normally collect to keep up with the storyline. Even then I doubt most of them understood it. I doubt that the writers at Marvel even knew what it was all about.

The Bug drags Cerebus back to his hideout, where he still has the McGrew brothers as his disciples. They both wear white versions of the Cockroaches costume, only he is allowed to wear the black one. The Cootie is as crazy as ever and still has weaknesses that don't fit in with his current character, but did apply to one of his other personas.

After getting drunk with the imbecilic brothers the white glowing ball appears to Cerebus again, only this time it swallows him up. I think we're going on another acid trip.

The Why & The Are: Origin of the Wolveroach Part 2

While Countess Michelle looked after her fiance; Vichy, she left Cerebus with Artemis. Cerebus has never gotten on with the Bug at the best of times. Mostly when they're alone they end up fighting. Because the Roach is, as usual, so completely in character that he's unintelligible to anyone sane Cerebus gives up.

Michelle seems rather put upon and feels as if she has to do everything, because no one else will help her. Personally I feel she has a persecution complex and actually likes having crises in her life. Why else would she invite Cerebus to stay with her when she obviously knows what he's like?

Unsurprisingly Artemis disappears. For some reason Michelle blames this on Cerebus, but it's just how the Roach is and how he's been ever since he got apprehended in Beduin with Elrod.

Later that night Cerebus and Michelle are again sitting on a couch by the window talking. Cerebus tells Michelle that the girl he almost married left him, she ran off with someone called Thomas. Her name was Michelle, which explains why he opened up to the Countess about her, they shared the same name.

The Wolveroach reappears and as usual stands there looking heroic and spouting gibberish. He seems to be under the impression that Michelle is his lover and that like with Astoria Cerebus has stolen her. I wondered if Dave was trying to make a parallel with Wolverine's longing for Jean Grey, but knowing he could never have her because she was in love with Cyclops. He goes up to the roof for his final stand, because there are a group of armed soldiers on the property looking for him. I've never know if this was meant to happen or this was Dave's way of complying with Marvels cease and desist order and making it work in the context of the book.

Swords of Cerebus #1: Cerebus the Aardvark

From the very first page of the very first issue you knew you were in for something different. The third panel was a half page of Cerebus mounted on a large barbarian warhorse. Being only 3 feet tall and an aardvark to boot this looked pretty funny and made an impression on the reader. The story itself was what you could expect to find in the pages of the Conan comics that were popular at the time, it was also reminiscent of some of the Conan knock offs that were around in novel form and competing comics. The hero; in this case Cerebus, is hired by a couple of treasure hunters to guide them to a mystical artifact, which he accomplishes with physical strength and a cool head. The twist was that the artifact, like everything around it, was an illusion, but Cerebus had been paid in cold hard cash. Like most first issues, particularly when the publisher/writer/artist is an independent, both artwork and story were relatively crude when compared to the big companies like Marvel and DC, even when compared to longer running more established independent publications, although at this time there weren’t many of those. Dave was a pioneer of independent publishing. In the early issues Cerebus himself looked different, his nose was longer and skinnier, ears were shorter and the tail was less detailed. He also used to wear a small, horned helmet, which he lost in issue #4. The one thing that stands out in many of the earlier issues was the lack of detail in the backgrounds. It would not be until later that Dave would team up with Gerhard, who produced some of the most intricately detailed backgrounds I’ve ever seen in a comic.