Heh

[thebitterguy]

What if Dave Sim wrote an RPG?

Okay, no, that's too harsh. But sometimes, you have to laugh at another person's issues.

Comments

[lowercaseem.livejournal.com]

I don't know... it seems a little misogynistic... :P

[thebitterguy]

Juuuuuust a little bit. If we could take anything John Wick says seriously, it might be frightening.

[lowercaseem.livejournal.com]

That's just it, though. I didn't take it seriously... so when that one individual posted about blah-di-feminism this and blah-di-objectification-of-womyns that... I tuned out. I suppose I'm not the target demographic for that sort of ranting. When I hear, see, read a person (male, female, or neither) carry on about the media and their portrayal of women my eyes glaze over and I stop listening, thinking to myself "I'm so glad you remember that bit from your early-nineties womyns studies text book.

Of course, I just assumed he was talking about crazy gamer chicks, instead of tarring all women with that particular "crazy" brush. I mean: it is a roleplaying game.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Okay, no, that's too harsh

Only a little. Wick has been going off-the-rails for a while. Ick.

[thebitterguy]

I honestly can never tell anymore if he's being a dick to make a point, or just being a dick.

So I assume the latter.

[innocent-man.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll bite. Who's Dave Sim?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Sim#Feminism_and_religious_conversion

[gamera-spinning.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, as a Dave Sim joke, that was well played.

[thebitterguy]

Heh. You mean by Wick, or me?

[gamera-spinning.livejournal.com]

By you.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

The Wikipedia article notes that Cerebus will fall into the public domain after Sim and Gerhard are dead. After reading (or is that "suffering through?") the first 600,000,000 pages four anthology books of the series, I can safely say that is the best place for it.

(Having to PAY to read such swill? I think not.)

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Having to PAY to read such swill? I think not.

I think that, for a short time in its life (last half of Cerebus, High Society, first little bit of Church & State I), Cerberus was very, very funny, especially if you were at the same time a fan of sword and sorcery style pulp fiction (i.e. Howard, Leiber, et al). It helped to be also a fan of the Marx brothers and comics being published at the same time as Cerberus (Moench's Moon Knight, frex).

But that groove quickly devolved into murk, at least as far as I was concerned. I toughed it out until the end of Melmoth, because I have pathological collector tendencies, but then I was (thank heavens) overcome by boredom and stopped collecting.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I wonder if CEREBUS is like Gor, where many people agree the earlier books were the best*, but don't agree on the cut-off point.

* Or if you prefer, "actually readable".

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

It's entirely possible. I certainly have a tooth for wallowing in media trash from time to time. Witness my "trash cinema years"... ::shudder::

But honest to God, I think I bought both the Jaka's Story and Melmoth issues before I read even the first few issues out of Jaka's Story. Once I got more than two years behind, I knew that my inner vinyl collector had asserted itself and I effected a firm behaviour correction.

I've had to do this on more than once occasion. Witness the size of my roleplaying and boardgame collections. Yeesh.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I turned 34 last year, and started doing a lot of closet-cleaning that was both mental and physical. And one of the decisions I made was that there are so many good things that go almost entirely unread and unseen, that I was doing myself a disservice by wallowing in the easily-available trash that everyone KNEW was bad and celebrated for that reason. I've lost my taste for that sort of thing for keeps.

Cerebus, though, was just tedious after a while, and I snuck a peek at the last few pages of the whole series one day while standing up in the bookstore. I chuckled, put it back on the shelf, and wondered why I had ever thought that would have been worth waiting decades on end to witness.

OK, I'll stop now. :D

[thebitterguy]

I think the big thing about Cerebrus, even after Sim's implosion, was the voyage. The 300 issue independant comic book.

I think it turned into Everest after a while. God knows I skipped over the last half or so. I picked up a copy of Guys and If Five Bar Gate Be My Destiny, because it was a hockey story.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Only if the first Gor books start off having nothing to do with the submission of women and the alleged natural dominance of men. Which would be a false statement, as they always did.

Cerebus started funny. Then got increasingly complex but still entertaining. Readership peaked after issue 100 somewhere, although Dave had begun his systematic alienation of ... well, everybody.

The vitriol and bitterness and madness came later.

Doug.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I wasn't an early fan (Not discovering Karl Edward Wagner or Robert E. Howard until the 21st century didn't help). I got on board with HIGH SOCIETY and stayed there until, oh, MELMOTH. JAKA'S STORY might have been a better stopping place.

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

That was pretty much me, to the T.

High Society, having left the swords & sorcery far behind ... had some fantastically funny bits in it, and delved far more into politics (which I was and remain interested in) then gender-issues.

I stopped collecting Cerebus sometime after Reads, when I realized I had continued to buy them for a year or two, but hadn't actually bothered to ever read them.

Doug.
Doug.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I stopped collecting Cerebus ... when I realized I had continued to buy them for a year or two, but hadn't actually bothered to ever read them.

::bing!::

Do you have boxes and boxes of old motown vinyl in your basement, Doug? 8)
(I don't any more. They've been replaced by boxes and boxes of old RPG books.)

[waiwode.livejournal.com]

Get out, Doug! Viktor is posting this LJ-post from within the house!!!

(Too bad I'm at work).

I think you and I are pot and kettle, Viktor.

I gave up music collecting decades ago. But I clean-swept out my RPG stuff twice (two moves where I couldn't bring it all), and still have boxes in the attic, the upstairs closet, my bedroom closet, the main-floor bookshelves, other boxes, the basement ... The ... damp ... basement. *sigh*

Doug.

[gamera-spinning.livejournal.com]

And there was the parodied joy that was Wolveroach.

Ouch

[thebitterguy]

I actually have most of the first hundred some in original versions or reprints. They were enjoyable when I first got them. Especially that issue with Moon Roach and wasserface all drunk. And the Spice Mice issue.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

You may have something -- the reason I stopped reading Cerberus had to do with Sim's seemingly unremitting psychic blackholes around the topic of women (or perhaps, more precisely, non-straight-men). Seems Wick has suffered from a similar syndrome. Oh well.

What saddens me most is the huge volume of comment threads after where folks attempt to argue about whether it is, or is not, mysoginy...

Ah, LiveJournal! It's like usenet for the new millennium! 8)

[perich.livejournal.com]

I don't think Dave Sim thinks of women in terms of "cuteness" or as "sex objects" any more, so that might be too harsh. Maybe Penthouse Dating Forum: The RPG.

And watch: the man who lashes out with savage fury over negative reviews of his RPGs will now accuse people of being "too sensitive" when they take umbrage at this idea.

[thebitterguy]

Well, it's light on voids, but the "women are manipulators" thing seems close enough for snide comedy.

I'm gonna have to buy some stuff at GenCon so I can write bad reviews. Just for old times sake.

[brand-of-amber.livejournal.com]

My favorite part was when he said there was no male equivelent of the crazy chick. Cause guys are, ya know, all right.

(Though later on in comments someone pointed out the asshole boyfriend and Wick thought that was cool, so....)

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Oooo burn!

[dogbreathcanada.livejournal.com]

Haha. Good call on Sim.