Abhorring Vacuums

Cerebus Adventures on the moon continues.

According to George Tarim is a Void, a dark, cold presence. Terim, the female God that the Cirinists worship, the one that Cerebus doesn't believe in, well it's real, too. It's light. Light and heat and yes it is the female half of Tarim. The two exist side by side, one cannot be without the other.

This is beautifully, if sparely drawn, and marvelously described. It is the miracle of creation. Two separate entities, one male, one female joining together to create something new and exciting.

Dave copped a lot of flak throughout the series for his anti feminist attitude. I don't think any of those critics read Abhorring Vacuums. No one who hates women could write this.

Extrusion Intrusion

This chapter picks up where the last one left off, with George still talking. All those years alone on the moon seem to have made him very fond of the sound of his own voice, because he never stops talking and he doesn't really care if anybody is listening.

He believes that the answer to Cerebus' 4th question concerns the history of Suenteus Po. The one that Cerebus occasionally communicates isn't the first one. The first 2 were father and son and were apparently warlords who created an army of child soldiers that eventually conquered the lands of the Pigts. This will be connected with why they worship an aardvark, but I'm getting ahead of myself there. The curse of the rereader.

While George drones on Cerebus wanders away and the combination of being able to see the world and the fact that the gravity allows him to float impress upon him that this isn't some sort of bizarre dream (well, it could be), and that he REALLY is on the moon!

He rejoins George who has gone on to describe in great detail and length the history of Suenteus Po which seems to end with the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. George eventually gets onto what, in his view, Tarim is. Tarim is what came before something and before something there was nothing. Tarim is the Void and the Void is Tarim.

To tell the truth I always got the impression that these chapters really had nothing to do with the continuing story in Cerebus, but were more about Dave trying to sort out issues with faith in his own head. At times Cerebus was all about Dave Sim's religious journey, which seems to have continued post the book.

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.

Odd Transformations

When you get a title like that you wonder if the chapter is going to be a reminiscence of one of Dave's acid trips. We weren't disappointed.

Cerebus drags himself back into the hotel and collapses onto the pile of money sacks. He falls asleep and begins to dream. He's standing in a stream, someone calls his name and all of a sudden he's a child aardvark, although still clad in his papal robes. Poling herself towards him is a large woman in a maids outfit. She's his mother and implores him to put his hat on, because no one wants to look at those ears. I wondered if this was a real memory in the dream. Was Cerebus, an aardvark child, really raised by human parents and forced to hide his differences?

Cerebus runs away, across the water. Possible Jesus parallels there. He leaps as high as he can and sails into space, as he's flying he encounters the baby he threw away, still wailing. While staring backwards at the infant he crashes into a large roman column.

He comes to at the base of a tree, now wearing his vest and medallions. Coming towards him is Henrot, wearing Sophia's chainmail bikini. Now there was an image I never needed to see. Cerebus takes off in terror and is forcing his way through a dense forest. Once again his clothes have changed and he's wearing some sort of military coat, with a fur trimmed cape. He emerges into a long grass path lined by statues and giant chess pieces. As Cerebus stalks down the path the statues and chess pieces rise into the air and float around behind him. In front of Cerebus is the moon. A voice from one of the craters invites him inside.

Sophia is waiting for him, she removes her bikini and tells him to come to bed, once again he's in his papal robes. Cerebus climbs into bed with Sophia and she morphs into Jaka. The two of them twine around each other and Jaka says she'll never leave him again. Cerebus falls asleep in her arms and wakes on the pile of money. There's a message about Cerebus here and it's debatable what he loves more, money or Jaka.

He clambers up and goes to his bedroom. There's a long three and a bit page sequence of Cerebus standing by his bed urinating. It's not clear if he was using a chamber pot, but I sure hope so. Again Cerebus falls asleep, this time in his bed.

Visually the chapter was arresting, with a lot of location and costume changes, this would have stretched both Dave and Gerhard.