Friday 27 December 2013

The Uncollected Cerebus Stories

Selling Insurance in Epic Illustrated #30 (Marvel Comics, 1985)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard
DOUGLAS WOLK:
(from Eight Comics That Demand To Be Reprinted, Time.com, 6 August 2010)
...The Anal-Retentive Cerebus. Or whatever title you like for a collection of all the Cerebus material that didn't make it into the sixteen paperbacks that collect most of Dave Sim and Gerhard's 300-issue series. There is rather a lot of it. Some of it is gorgeous (like the full-color stories Sim and Gerhard did for Epic Illustrated); some of it is pretty significant to the overall plot (especially the Gene Day collaboration What Happened Between Issues Twenty and Twenty-One); some of it is just a lot of fun (like the collaborations with Terry Austin and Will Eisner that ran in Cerebus Jam). Meanwhile, instead of keeping this stuff in print, Sim has published two volumes of his correspondence from 2004 and a new edition of his 1997 self-publishing guide. Not the same.

Luckily for Douglas most of those missing Cerebus stories are available to read online at Cerebus Fan Girl and Cerebus The Aardvark (navigate to the 'Colour Miscellany' section). Also, the 1995 Cerebus World Tour Book reprints the Gene Day collaboration What Happened Between Issues Twenty and Twenty-One, together with other short stories that originally appeared in the Swords Of Cerebus reprint series. Cerebus #0 collects the 'inbetween' issues of the monthly Cerebus comic not included in the 16 reprint volumes (ie #51 Exodus, #112/113 Square One and #137/138 Like-A-Looks).

UPDATE:
Sunday Comics Debt points out that Cerebus Dreams II from AV in 3D remains uncollected (but was reprinted in 2D in Following Cerebus #10). In the comments section Michael Grabowski notes that the Elfguest 4-page short story from Cerebus #52 has never been reprinted.

1 comment:

Michael Grabowski said...

Has the Elfquest parody from #52 of the comic ever been collected? Can someone confirm if it appeared in the appropriate issue of Cerebus Bi-weekly? I believe I read that it really ticked off the Pinis. It isn't needed at all for the Church & State prologues that surround it in that issue. It's much more like a Swords back-up than anything relevant to the larger story, so it's not really missed.