Throwing Babies (Again!)

Cerebus #276 (March 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from the annotations to Cerebus Vol 15: Later Days, 2003)

...I thought it was worth one last visit to the super-hero world with Cerebus instead of the Roach (who would have been long since dead at this point) as the latest incarnation. A tribute, however back handed to Todd [MacFarlane's Spawn] having, I believe, really come up with the super-hero to end all super-heroes: literally a demon from hell, a hell-spawn. What could more suitably depict, on the one hand, the erosion both of society and the comic-book field that the most successful hero of the nineties turned out to be a demon and on the other hand the peculiar malleability of fascism that such a thing could seem sensible and plausible (in its context). Batman to the nth degree ("criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot, so my disguise must strike terror into hearts"). Becoming bad to fight for good...

Cerebus #276 (March 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

...Anyway, since I was doing a very broad parody and since Cerebus is about amoral an individual as you could hope to find on a comic page (oh, you've noticed?), I figured it was time to revisit that classic Cerebus gag of yesteryear, the "baby-throwing page" (the first was bough by Gino Attanassio in San Jose, days after the issue coming out. It is beyond any doubt, the most in-demand Cerebus original of all time. I could have sold it a dozen times in that first month), this time with the added heft of a seven-foot hell-spawn arm to really get the necessary leverage to let that little sucker really take off ("Wheee!").

For sheer evil, it was kind of fun out-Spawning Spawn.

Cerebus #276 (March 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard