Melmoth

Cerebus #140 (November 1990)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

DAVE SIM:
(from Note From The President, Cerebus 139, October 1990)

So here we are starting Melmoth, the shortest of the Cerebus volumes at a puny two hundred and forty pages (aww. Isn't it cute? Id's dust a 'iddle one!). Which is why it's designated as Melmoth a short story in the black box that never leaves the side of the Note From The President over yonder. This is sure to piss off all the artistes in the biz with (in Howard Chaykin's immortal phrase) the backs of their hands nailed to their foreheads, but hey around here two hundred and forty pages is a cake-walk, not a magnum opus.

This one I like a lot because it serves the dual function of distant epilogue to Jaka's Story - a kind of echo you can scarcely hear - and prologue to Mothers & Daughters (which clocks in at a hefty one thousand pages and could probably last a few rounds in the ring against Church & State). It also ends at the half-way point of the Cerebus story-line which is the finish of the Male Cycle in the story-line which switches gender (in a thematic sense) in 151. Um. What else? It's... pardon?

Is who in it? Cerebus?

Jeez that's a good one. Let me check my notes here. Mm. Nothing in 139. Nothing in 140. Dum da da da dum...

Ah. Yep. Cerebus definitely appears in this one. We just hope he doesn't hurt sales too badly.