Flash for Freedom - Chapter 4

After ALL of the action in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 is a bit of a come down. A lot of it concerns itself with the business of preparing, loading and then transporting the cargo of the Balliol College. I guess at the time Flash for Freedom came out, the finer details of slave trading didn’t exist outside of non fiction. By the time I read it, I’d seen TV programs featuring it and read a number of books, including an excellent children’s book the name of which escapes me (it may have been Slave Dancer) that dealt with the same subject, so it was a bit old hat for me and not of much interest. I was struck this time by how Flashman describes these situations, but does so in a totally self centred way. It’s never about the ordeal others are going through, more about how it affects him personally.

Once underway there’s a rather half hearted chase by an American ship, they also tally up the ‘butchers bill’ and it’s worked out that, not including the cabin boy, they lost 5 men in the engagement on the beach. No one believes Comber will survive either, if for no other reason than Mrs Spring has volunteered to nurse him.

The men are encouraged to avail themselves of the female slaves, apparently if it can be proved that they’re ‘breeders’ it increases their value on the block. Flashman adopts one young lady, and unable to learn her language, teaches her both an English phrase and a Latin one, he does the latin to annoy John Charity Spring, he also christens her Lady Caroline Lamb, because it amuses him. The real Caroline Lamb was an aristocrat and novelist who had an affair with Byron, she died in 1828, so I’m not really sure why Flashman gave the girl that name unless his family was somehow connected to the woman. Maybe Buck had an affair with her, as well.

There is an incident involving Charity Spring that is going to have ramifications for the story later on. The ship has a mentally disabled cabin boy and general dogsbody they name Looney. The rest of the crew generally make fun of him or use him as a punching bag. Charity Spring as he tends to do takes it too far, and it alters the boy’s personality.

Comber dies of his wounds, but before doing so asks to see Flashman and makes a deathbed confession. He’s not a sailor who signed on with a slaver because of some scandal. He’s actually a British naval lieutenant collecting information with the intention of prosecuting all involved. When he realises he’s going to die he pegs Flashman as the person who can continue his work. Flashman comes into possession of the documents that not only can sink John Charity Spring, but also point to John Morrison as profiting from slavery. Flashman hides the paperwork by sewing it into his belt, but determines that it will make for an excellent way of squeezing his father-in-law when he gets back to England.

The Balliol College arrives to a chaotic scene in a Cuban port, because gold has just been discovered in California and everyone and their dog is off to stake a claim.

Melmoth

The bulk of the Melmoth book is devoted to the middle section. It's essentially 2 stories, Cerebus in the city after finding Jaka gone from Pud's pub and a visual depiction of Oscar Wilde's last days. I suspect that Dave was at this stage of his life more interested in telling the story of the Irish writer than he was in telling that of his earth pig hero, but he did do both.

The story is broken into 2 parts that run alongside each other. One is Cerebus at a small cafe, it has the same waitress who angered normalroach in the prologue, so it's safe to assume it's the same cafe. The other is Wilde's dying days as he is attended by his friends Robbie and Reggie. It's never made clear if this is the same Oscar from Jaka's Story, and if it is then the author is doing some odd things with time. Cerebus's story which seems to run concurrently with Oscar's is taking place in the days following Jaka's capture and Oscar was supposed to serve 2 years of hard labour for being an unlicensed writer, and he has definitely done that.

Cerebus offers the cafe owner a gold coin, in return for food and lodging for the rest of his life. The man is only too happy to agree. He can actually have the entire cafe renovated extensively just with the interest he earns off the coin. Obviously the Cirnists seriously screwed up the economy of Iest.

Initially Cerebus is attended by the bad tempered Janice, but she is soon replaced by the young, somewhat dippy, but much nicer natured Doris. Her taking Cerebus order and being very particular with his raw potato was extremely funny and reminded me of a few waitresses I've dealt with.

For the most of this Cerebus sits almost catatonic out the front and rarely speaks beyond occasionally saying 'Aye'. He never lets go of Missy, he clutches her the entire time. As he sits there characters from the series occasionally wander in and out of the landscape. Henrot Gutch, Boobah, Posey (I was amazed to see that he was still alive, poor little man was caught by the Cirinists and sentenced to 5 years hard labour for being an orhtodix cleric in violation of the upper city quarantine. Poor Posey.), Prince Mick and keef. Cerebus actually holds a conversation with Mick, they've been forced to marry the Buttock Sisters in order to get their wealthy father to bail them out of the hell that Iest has become.

When Oscar passes there's a wonderfully poignant page of Cerebus and Doris watching the house he was in and holding hands.

There's another conversation where Doris talks about an old boyfriend who she's not sure if she's still in love with or not and asks Cerebus if he knows what she means. The aardvark answers 'Aye' and in his mind is a picture of Jaka.

Melmoth was a definite departure from the storyline and I've wondered if there was more to the main story of Cerebus that we never saw, because Dave could not have known how interested he would become in Oscar Wilde when he originally came up with the overarching storyline of the whole graphic novel.

Another Thing Coming

Dave played one of his many artistic tricks with the title, it spans three pages. The drawings and the text on those pages show Cerebus addressing the ever growing throng that congregate outside the hotel to hear him speak and see him maybe throw another baby. No babies this time, but he does kick an old man off the top of the hotel with the message that one less mouth to feed is one less mouth to feed, and this presumably allows you to get more gold to give to Most Holy.

Powers and Weisshaupt watch these displays and the growing devotion to Cerebus with ever increasing urgency. Powers is largely helpless, being hamstrung by his own churches leadership based in distant Serrea. Weisshaupt is less so. Cerebus is now wealthier than him, far wealthier. He's damn mad and not going to take it anymore!

Cerebus has contracted a dreadful head cold and can barely move. He also talks amusingly with a blocked nose. Playing the concerned wife Sophia has him put to bed, she unwisely leaves him alone with her mother while she goes to make him some tea. Henrot takes her frustration out on Cerebus, who is helpless in his weakened state.

While Cerebus endures a feverish, restless night, the crowd wait outside. Having tried to sleep through my fair share of head colds I could entirely sympathise with the aardvark.

Posey comes to see Cerebus while Sophia is ministering to him, and when the stauesque warrior woman remarks that she thought Posey was a mouse, it makes perfect sense. Sophia is larger than most men, but with Posey it's strangely exaggerated. Weisshaupt wants to speak to Cerebus, he's on the roof directly across from the hotel's window. Cerebus hauls himself out of bed and goes to the window. Weisshaupt demands Cerebus' gold, Cerebus tells him that he's 'duts' until Weisshaupt reveals the line of cannons he has arrayed across the rooftop.

The title of the next issue, promoted as: DEXT: na shid hids da fad *SNIFF* really makes you want to continue. The pace since the new book started has been breakneck.

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.

Swords of Cerebus #3: Swords Against Imesh, Merchant Of Unshib, The Merchant & The Cockroach, Beduin By Night

After 8 issues Cerebus had added a love interest in Jaka, and had a regular recurring character in Elrod, the world in which the aardvark moved was really starting to take shape, and it was already moving away from it's roots as a Conan parody starring an aardvark.

Swords Against Imesh picked up where the previous issue left off, with Cerebus leading his army of military fanatics against the city of Imesh. It was a city the aardvark knew well, having spent his adolescence there and learned magic under the tutelage of Magus Doran. Dave had realised that having given Cerebus power, he didn't really want him to have it yet, and this story was his way of removing that power. The city was surrounded by a huge wall, Cerebus left his army outside and scaled the wall to investigate what was going on in Imesh. In a huge tower he encountered Imesh's King K'cor; a beefy bearded character who had enslaved the city by addicting it's populace to a drug he called Buz. Cerebus had no intention of being thwarted and tackled K'cor's champion Lord Koghem, having defeated Koghem, Cerebus thinks that he now has control of the city, however K'cor had other ideas and challenged Cerebus himself. Cerebus was unable to get through K'cor's armour, and looked set to lose when the king gave up the fight, informing Cerebus that if he had left his army outside to forage for food and water, then as all the wells in the surrounding area had been poisoned to discourage barbarian attacks, then they were probably dead, and Cerebus was no threat and of no use. A stunned Cerebus watched K'cor's large retreating back and realised that he was back to where he was before he met the Conniptins.

I felt that comparing the artwork in Swords Against Imesh with that of the next issue: Merchant of Unshib, that there was a subtle change. Cerebus began to look less like the long nosed cartoon that he began as and more as the better drawn version that readers came to know and love. Red Sophia returned in Merchant of Unshib. I hoped she wouldn't become a regular recurring character, she was a one joke character to me, and the book had begun to move beyond such a two dimensional character. While trekking through a blizzard Cerebus ran into Red Sophia. His reaction said that he would rather have encountered an avalanche. Sophia told Cerebus that she knew the whereabouts of the Black Blossom Lotus; a priceless magical artifact. Cerebus agreed to help her obtain it and share the proceeds with her when she introduced her partner; Meirgen, a musclebound, brainless barbarian warrior (just Sophia's type), the trio later had a 4th conspirator join them; a treacherous T'Capmin border guard. Cerebus double crossed the other 3, took the Lotus all for himself, and for once walked away a winner.

The Merchant & The Cockroach marked another turning point for the book. The city of Beduin was somewhat more civilized than the barbarian towns we'd been seeing. It was also the introduction to one of the books most important and popular characters; The Cockroach. Dave got the idea from talking to Marshall Rogers about Batman...sorry The Batman to give him his real name, and he started thinking about doing his own version of the character in Cerebus with what was a very 'Dave' twist. In The Batman legend Bruce Wayne and his alter ego are aware of one another. By day The Cockroach is a mild mannered businessman, and by night the crime avenging Cockroach, however the businessman doesn't know what he becomes at night and The Cockroach doesn't know about the existence of his law abiding other side. After selling the Black Blossom Lotus to the businessman and watching him destroy it Cerebus accidentally happened to witness the transformation to The Cockroach. It intrigued him and he followed, as he comes to call the unhinged night time avenger; The Cootie. He observed The Cockroach find, beat up criminals and take their money, he then saw him make his way back to his house, drop the money into a hole in the wall and go to sleep. Cerebus did some exploring and realises that The Cockroach has been doing this for years and doesn't realise that there is 8 feet of gold in between the walls of his house. Cerebus tried to use The Cockroach to take the gold out of the city, but realised that The Cootie was an extremely unreliable assistant, unfortunately this happened too late for Cerebus to keep more than a sack or two of the gold.

This is also the first issue I can remember seeing Cerebus regular wardrobe of black vest and the three medallions.

Beduin by Night followed directly on. Having escaped from the authorities in Beduin, and leaving The Cockroach to their mercies Cerebus holed up in a tavern and proceeded to drink himself through what gold he managed to keep, whilst lamenting all that he had lost. After overhearing that The Cockroach had been taken into custody, he went back to the Cootie's house to check on the rest of the gold only to find that it was gone. I have to admit that seeing Cerebus have a conniption when finding that the gold is gone and referring to it as 'Cerebus gold' amused me greatly and it was so typical of the character and his incredible, overwhelming avarice. Further searching led him to The Cockroach's version of the Batcave, complete with Cockroach and gold. Cerebus told The Cockroach that they had to move the gold because Elrod of Melvinbone planned to steal it. This may have worked except that while moving the gold the two of them actually met Elrod! The fight between Elrod and The Cockroach drew the city watch, and while Cerebus fought them off, he also lost the majority of the gold in the process. Yet again Elrod had managed to ruin Cerebus grand plans simply by being there. You could tell it would not be the last time and I didn't think it would be the last we would see of The Cockroach. As it turns out it was the last time we saw him as The Cockroach, but we would learn that like his namesake The Cockroach could never really be exterminated.