“Cerebus Valentines for That Special Void in Your Life”
Courtesy of the ingenious Comics Alliance blog comes a fairly obscure in-joke that will have comics geeks rolling on the floor laughing– a series of Dave Sim-satirizing Valentine’s Day cards:
“Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and for all you gentlemen out there with a special lady in your life, there can be a lot of pressure to tell her exactly how you feel — or at least to find a Valentine’s Day card that says it for you.”
“Well, when we here at ComicsAlliance think of romance in comics, only one name comes to mind: Dave Sim. With that in mind, we’ve created a series of Valentines based on Sim’s legendary indie comic Cerebus and the many insights into women and relationships that he offered in the long-running series about a sword-fighting aardvark. You’re welcome to download them and send them to your special someone — we think they’ll have the ladies swooning!”
For those of you who are going “BUHHH?”, here’s some context: the only thing potentially more legendary than the artistry Dave Sim displayed in his Cerebus series is the mental, misogynist ranting he’d often print in its back pages. He’s basically the brilliant, fulminating Eminem of self-published comics (only it seems like he takes himself a lot more seriously than Marshall Mathers). You gotta love him… at arm’s length. Especially if you have a vagina. There’s only so much pure, blinding Male Light a gal can take!
More cards here.
February 12th, 2010 at 11:43 am
OMG, these are brilliant. I wish I had a comics-savvy girlfriend.
Also, Dave Sim needs to take more lessons on the proper placement of boobs.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:39 am
I rofled hard. And also reminded myself it was time to finish those phone book sized Cerebus Omnibuses. Çomneribuses.
February 13th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
If you can give one of those to a girl and instead of kneeing you in the testicles she laughs…she’s a keeper.
February 13th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
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February 14th, 2010 at 6:05 am
I’d like to point out that alot of Sim’s famous misogynist rants were just copied feminist writings with the sexes reversed. The point of the ‘joke’ was that if he was an evil sexist pig for publishing that stuff (and cerebus is an ardvark or ‘earth pig’) what does that make feminists?
February 15th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
cheezewizz, I think it makes feminists not all agree with each other.
Citation please, though? That’s pretty funny if it’s true.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
NO OCTOPOD WE ALL THINK EXACTLY ALIKE DIDN’T YOU GET THE MEMO?
February 15th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
OH RIGHT. THE HIVE VAGINA COMMANDS IT. BAD OCTOPUS! ::splat::
February 16th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
@cheezewizz…First time I’ve heard that, sources?
It’d be a pretty gimmicky way of making a point though. He’d have to have some Andy Kaufman level of focus to stick to such a “joke” for so long. Plus he’d be doing more of a disservice to his argument by painting all feminists in a Valerie Solanas kind of mold.* His rant wasn’t exactly a delicately worded bit of scholarly insight to begin with. The stuff that followed less so.
Was he being dead serious? Probably not to the level some painted it but he wasn’t being coy or misinterpreted either.
I always found his stance more of a distraction than anything. It did more damage to his work than he’ll probably ever admit to…though I would love to have seen this play out NOW. Just to see how much it would snowball online.
*I’ve nothing against Solanas but I always got the impression it was feminists like her that Sim had such hostility for.
February 17th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Man, these are awesome. Part of the advantage of getting the phone-book collections of Cerebus was the fact that you could enjoy the comic without having to deal with Sim’s insanity. Also, ask Jeff Smith if he thinks Dave Sim is joking.
April 27th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
heheh I love my comic-savvy girlfriend….
Best story ever: I went into House of Mystery comics shop in Burbank and bought some Alan Moore and I think Grant Morrison. After striking up a conversation with the clerk who was dropping some obscure comics names I said:
“Yeah, I wasn’t too into comics for years. My girlfriend got me back into them recently.”
He paused and his face took on a starry eyed air of awe.
“We…we dont hear that a lot round here…”
I went out the door smiling big and knowing how awesome my GF is. :)