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| The assembled puzzle from Cerebus #63 (June 1984) Art by Dave Sim |
(from the No More Games essay in Following Cerebus #8, May 2006)
The next Mind Game story occurs at a particularly key moment in the saga: Bishop Powers has just nominated Cerebus, currently the prime minister of Iest, as Eastern Pontiff. Cerebus, bored and frustrated with political life, married life, manipulation by Weisshaupt, and in a rather self-absorbed, self-pitying mood, decides to drink himself into a stupor. Well into the process, he's told, "You're the western church's nominee for eastern pontiff." He concludes he's hearing things, but soon enough he is, indeed, the pope, and finds the inherent power in the position too tempting to resist using for his own personal gain.
Visually, the combined images on the halves of each of the pages form a large illustration of Cerebus as pope with the words Mind Game III... (The story itself is titled Mind Game IV, propelling readers to ask, "Where's Mind Games III?" and having to solve the puzzle to get the answer. As Sim explained in the bi-weekly reprint series Cerebus: Church & State #13, "The puzzle is Mind Game III. The story is Mind Game IV.")
3 comments:
dull
Ouch! Like a dagger through the heart...
I'd never seen the 'hidden picture' in that issue before (not wanting to cut-up my copy of Cerebus)...
I didn't cut my copy up, either, but I did copy out little pencil thumbnails of all the half-pages (1"x2"), then cut, puzzled, and glued them into the back of one of my sketchbooks, while trying to figure out just what the heck I was looking at.
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