12 September 2004
Following Cerebus
Yearning to read good, new comics again, I went to Oxford Comics a week or so ago.
As many crap events that occur in my life (fall. crak. ouch.), many times I am connected with the universe and coincidence slips me an inside straight. My random urge to git me some funnuh pages coincided with the release of issue #1 of Following Cerebus. It's a comic book in name that contains essays and interviews discussing the major and minor themes of the 6,000-page story. Dave Sim appears to be readily available (to be interviewed in issue #2) and the writers/producers have an intimate understanding of both Cerebus and of literary analysis.
Most notable is a 10-page analysis of the recurring motif of "something fell." At several key dramatic points in the story, characters will hear a noise and say "something fell," or they will hear the noise and undefined scenes will show characters saying "something fell." The authors dig through the specific occurrences and discuss their similarities and differences, along with related scenes where objects fall or rise, and analyze the objects, the dramatic background, and the related objects in the scenes. Wonderful, structural analysis.
(I had originally wanted to use a "something fell" scene as the first Comic Page of the Week. However, the scenes are often so long-range--taking three to four pages to define context--that it just didn't work. A flaw of scanning only a single page.)
The writers also publish two other magazines, advertised in the back pages. One is called "Wrapped in Plastic," which analyzes the works of David Lynch (Laura Palmer, the dead teenager in Twin Peaks was found wrapped in a sheet of plastic). The other is called "Spectrum":
Tired of shallow and frivolous TV magazines that give you nothing but pointless text accompanies by pretty photos? Then SPECTRUM is the magazine for you! Sure, it has great photos, but it combines them with in-depth articles and analyses of your favorite programs.
Sounds cool.
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