As I open volume 1 of my favorite work of sequential art, I’m instantly transported by the smell of the pages to Christmas 1995, when I first received the book. I was 11 at the time, having just seen Dave Sim’s segment on the “Masters of Comic Book Art” documentary. Among all the other people interviewed, Dave struck a chord with me as I was beginning to outgrow the spandex sector of the comics market and was looking for something more adult, involved, and complex. I asked for the first phonebook (the colloquial name for the collected volumes, as a reference to their size), and as I read through the first 25 issues of this highly unique comic, I realized I had hit the mark.

The comic itself began in December 1977 as a parody mashup of Conan the Barbarian and Howard the Duck (“sword and sorcery” genre meets “funny animal in human environment” genre). By the time High Society came around in 1979 with issue #26, it began to take on a life of its own, with a rich sense of satire and political insight. The comic continued until March 2004, concluding with issue #300. This was an occasion that was planned well in advance by the creator, Dave Sim, around the time that he began High Society. He had planned to depict an entire life story as a reaction against superhero comics of the time in which characters never aged or had any long-lasting effects affect them as a result of their actions. In this case, the protagonist would be a foul-tempered, but resourceful and cunning three-foot aardvark. Cerebus spans 6,000 pages in total and is one of the longest sustained narratives by a single creative team (Though, when the series began, Gerhard had not yet joined Dave as background artist. It’s clear from the onset that Dave didn’t really need Gerhard, as he was a fairly capable background artist at the time. However, I’m glad the two finally hooked up, because Ger’s contribution transformed an outstanding comic into actual magic. We’ll see more on this in the Church & State volumes).

Cerebus is set in the 1400s-1600s on a fictional continent called Estarcion, which basically plays as an analog for Europe. Though it is set in this time period, it is also in some sort of a time/fantasy warp in which technological and ideological advances take place at an increased rate. As such, the story begins in the northern lands of Estarcion, where Cerebus makes a living as a mercenary, sometimes making money by taking odd jobs like protecting wizards’ daughters or by fighting alongside barbarian armies against supernatural forces. By the end of the series, airships have been invented.

This is my fourth re-read of the series, and I’m always struck by how much mythology Dave sets up right from the beginning. Characters met even in the first 6 issues become highly important later down the line, and it seems that not only the names of many of the more important cities in Estarcion are set in stone, but also their style of government and the dispositions of their citizens. This is doubly impressive when one stops to consider that Dave was able to flesh this mythology out for 26 years.

Cerebus looks pretty different here at the beginning, as Dave was still developing his style. He also speaks and reacts to situations a little differently. This is Cerebus before ambitious political minds found him an easy pawn in their game, and so Cerebus comes off as much more self-reliant, intelligent and resourceful. At this point, he’s only interested in money and ale. Later down the line, he’ll also become interested in power (an idea introduced to him by President Weisshaupt), and this will make him much easier to manipulate.

Dave starts getting ambitious fairly early on in terms of creating longer story arcs. The first 7 issues are pretty much stand-alone stories, but then he starts in on 2 and 3-parters, and what I would consider to be a solid 5 parter leading into High Society (a 25-parter). The most important thing is how well these play out as stories. Dave’s writing is so fluid and natural, you really wouldn’t think that he was relatively new to this kind of work. I’d consider Cerebus’ discussion with the T’Gitans over how to overrun the city-state of Palnu as some of the best dialogue writing in comics ever. He’s also clearly a top comic mind, as his writing for Lord Julius (a Groucho Marx parody) will attest. To be able to write in the voice and comic style of another comedian must be extremely difficult, but Dave executes his skill with great efficiency. Not only is he writing new Groucho Marx jokes, you can actually imagine Groucho saying this stuff. It’s incredible.

The art, too, is quite stunning, and only gets more so (very quickly, I might add). I don’t know if there’s really a sense of what Dave’s full potential was, especially with lettering, but his art here is miles above many, many artists that get work with The Big Two, even now. I mentioned before Dave’s background drawing proficiency, and that was no offhand comment. He obviously gets sick of it by High Society and hired Gerhard a little later, but there are some beautiful snow-capped landscapes and buildings in this first volume. The scene in which Cerebus confronts Lord Julius’ would-be assassin (pg 308 in the phonebook) is a great example of Dave’s sense of perspective and ability to draw man-made structures. Another fantastic example is the splash on page 1 of issue 21 (pg 435 for those reading along in the phonebooks). Dave’s attention to detail here has him drawing carriage tracks in the snow in front of Cerebus sitting on a sidewalk bench, with a snow-covered Beduin looming in the distance.

I often have newcomers make up their own mind on whether they want to skip this volume as it’s a little slow-going at the very beginning for those who want something bigger right away, and not entirely essential to the larger story—but I think I’m starting to re-evaluate that position. Up next is High Society, in which everything set up in this volume begins to pay off.

For those who want to read along, the entire series is available as a digital download at Cerebus Downloads.

There is also a major effort to restore the artwork of the series and release new phonebooks with the results. We’re moving right along, but the process requires a lot of man-hours and other resources, so if you’d like to help out, you can at Kickstarter.