Monday 7 April 2014

Jimmy Gownley: The Dumbest Idea Ever

The Dumbest Idea Ever! (Scholastic Books, 2014)
by Jimmy Gownley
J. CALEB MOZZOCCO:
(from the Everyday Is Like Wednesday blog, 10 March 2014)
In Jimmy Gownley's The Dumbest Idea Ever, a new memoir comic in which the Amelia Rules cartoonist recounts how he first became a comic book creator, Gownley recounts his first trip to a comic book store. It's a pretty great sequence that should ring true to any comics lover of a certain age who remembers the first time they discovered there were these places where they sold nothing but comics. Most of the titles and covers featured in the scene are made-up ones, with the exception of Dave Sim and Gerhard's Cerebus. You know, the super weird comic about a donkey.

Cerebus makes an encore appearance later in the book as well, when young Jimmy Gownley is feeling a little lost and, late one night, he realizes what the existence of Cerebus signifies. You know, that you can make, publish and sell your own comic books. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a nice surprise to wake up and see that I'm today's Moment of Cerebus! You do an amazing job on this site, an I enjoy checking it out every day.


I couldn't actually fit this in, but the two issues I purchased that day were #'s 66 and 80... the oldest issue I could find, and the most recent. Suffice it to say, my mind was blown.

I always find it amusing when people debate over where newbies should start reading CEREBUS. Half the fun for me was jumping in and having absolutely no idea what was going on.

Jimmy Gownley

Tony Dunlop said...

And the next most fun is having read the whole series several times and still having no idea what's going on...

Anonymous said...

Just 'jumping in' doesn't seem to happen a lot anymore. I'm guilty of it myself, but I remember days gone by when I would just grab a comic with a neat cover, and then if the issue was good, buy it next month and then try to find earlier issues.

This being back when you could pick up 15 or so regular titles per comic shop run didn't cost you the better part of a c-note...

-Wes Smith

Jeff Seiler said...

"You know, the super weird comic about a donkey."

WTF?!?!?

Jimmy Gownley said...

In my book THE DUMBEST IDEA EVER, the "Jimmy" character sees the Cerebus comic for the first time, and says something like "What's with the comic with the donkey? It looks super weird." The comic shop owner then corrects "Jimmy."

The writer of this piece is referencing that, he doesn't really think Cerebus is a donkey.

Jimmy Gownley