Dave Sim's Answers to Five Questions about Flight, part 6

Kickstarter ends 2 December!

Hi, Everybody!

As we close in on the last week for the Kickstarter for Cerebus Archive Number 7: Flight, I thought we should take a look back on Dave's answers to the Cerebus Yahoo Group's five questions. Specifically, his answers regarding Flight.

Preamble: So a few years ago (2005, I believe,) The Cerebus Yahoo Group started a re-read of the whole series. And then we'd discuss an individual volume and come up with five questions and send them to Dave, and he would respond. These are those questions and answers. (Please note, most questions were multi-part in nature, and Dave would break them down as he answered them.

Q5. Is there any further explanation for what K'Cor's abandoned, unfinished monument was supposed to be, or represent? In Cerebus #9, we see the plans for the completed monument. It looks like an abstract, armless, humanoid form. A little green man? An Aardvark? K'Cor's ramblings about the Venusians seem like the ranting of a madman, and one could dismiss the whole thing as an early plot idea left in the dust- but you brought it back in Flight. Po refers to K'Cors monument as being "of great and vital importance on many of the inter-connecting chessboards: alignments of power and influence ebbed and flowed in its proximity. Its completion would have wrought profound and lasting change." K'Cor is fascinated with Venus, and the moon- both astrological aspects of Woman. So, who was guiding his hand? Terim/Yoowhoo? Cirin? And if this monument was so important to the interdimensional aspect of Woman, why was it derailed by a woman in the departure of Sedra, all the while K'Cor still being in contact with "The Living Goddess?"

DAVE: Well, actually that was just my peculiar sense of humour. What K'Cor was attempting to build was a giant DNA molecule, a double helix, but he didn't have much in the way of a three-dimensional sense so that's what it came out looking like. Po was responding to the intent behind it, on the spiritual level and, there's my sense of humour again. If you are a human being (or an aardvark-let's say "physically incarnated") the danger with attempting to live a spiritual life is that you can only know it imperfectly "through a glass darkly" so your assessments become imperfect and vaguely (or sometimes specifically I'm sure) ludicrous. "There is a great deal of laughter but it's very high up and very far away." K'Cor was guided by his insights, whether he was inhabited by a higher consciousness or spoken to in his dreams or, more likely, a drug victim. You make your own choices. I suspect I was unconsciously showing myself what it was that I was about to choose-to spend twenty-six years building this giant monument which might prove to be something or might not-that might be useful as a "stairway to heaven" or prove to be as valuable as a giant two-dimensional model of part of a DNA molecule. Time will tell.

Even at the time I was quite aware that there is an enormous difference between an individual woman and womankind contemplated collectively although I hadn't yet arrived at the conclusion that in trying to satisfy and serve the interests of the latter you will, more often than not, alienate the former and in trying to serve and satisfy the interests of the former, you will, more often than not alienate the latter. And since women have, through feminism, universally adopted a collectivist identity in addition to their individual identities, it is ultimately impossible to choose one or the other exclusively. You must in any given circumstance choose to address her as an incarnation of the collective identity or as herself as an individual and whichever one you choose to address she will, in my experience, adopt the protective colouration of the other. The mistake that K'Cor made was in thinking that his allegiance to the collective female identity and unquestioning devotion to The Goddess assured the success of his relationship with Sedra when nothing could be further from the truth. She left him because clearly she wasn't his primary relationship, The Goddess and the collective womankind was his primary relationship. I think most women measure the success of their relationships by the knee-jerk quality of their partner's responses. If she's in "O" mode you have to respond in "O" fashion. If she's in "1" mode, you have to respond in "1" fashion and if you guess wrong as to which mode she is in with your initial response you have to be able to create a plausible cover story as to how you meant "0" when you actually said "1". Of course becoming adept at these things just makes you uninteresting and she leaves out of boredom while failing to become adept at the quick switch makes you perverse and she leaves out of resentment.

Next: The Wildcard (dun dun DUN!)...