Cuts & Bruises

Cerebus #282 (September 2002)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard

GREG GRIFFIN:
(from Aardvark Comment, Cerebus #298, January 2004)

...Cerebus has been a big part of my intellectual and aesthetic life for most of my adulthood. I can't pretend to have always understood what you're on about: I'd say I only "got" maybe a third of Reads the first time through and only after a couple of re-readings within the context of Mothers & Daughters and the storyline preceding it did it really kick me in the head. Like everybody else, I thought Melmoth was a dreadful bore, surely just a giant prank on your part, until a similar re-read. (Now, if I only I could have a similar epiphany with Chasing YHWH...)

Part of what I look forward to with you monthly "visits" is the certain knowledge that on some level, you are going to fuck with me. You fuck with me in ways that are much bigger than a "what happens next?" kind of a thing. You fuck with me in ways that family cannot, that, that friends will not, that even other artists dare not. If you were fucking with me just to fuck with me, well, no great shakes there. Been there done that. In your case, the cuts and bruises I've sustained on this 20-some-odd year journey have fed in part to what I have decided - and what I have decided NOT - to be.

I wanted you to know that I'm going to miss hearing from you every month. What am I, a glutton for punishment or what? Maybe I can talk one of my friends into coming over and jabbing me in the eye on the third Wednesday of every month... no that wouldn't work. I'll give him a cast iron skillet, a syringe, a scalpel, the complete works of John Milton, and a blowtorch and tell him to surprise me...