Jaka's Story

Cerebus #5

by Dave Sim, Gerhard

In this volume, reprinting Cerebus #114-136, Cerebus returns to find his life in ruins and ends up as the house guest of the love of his life, Jaka, and her new husband, Rick. SC, 7x10, 500pg, b&w

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comix, Satire

488 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1991

About the author

David Victor Sim is a Canadian comic book, artist and publisher, best known as the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark.

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is in this volume that this series finally turns it up for me, interestingly a volume in which Cerebus hardly features. This volume centres around key supporting character Jaka's current exile and her past; but is her past her story or someone else's? It is in this volume which is all ongoing plot(s) and no intermissions that I truly see the creative and artistic talent of Dave Sim come to the fore; conversely appreciation for this changed way of storytelling and art, mid-series, can only be truly appreciated by reading the series in its entirety. A firm 6 out of 12, Three Star read.

2025 read

[Eric Skillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The high water mark for Dave Sim's opus. His raving misogyny (which, along with his religious views, completely takes over the 2nd half of the series) has already taken hold by this point, but the amazing thing about this book is that you honestly might not notice—the characters are so well drawn (in both senses of that term), that you can come to conclusions opposite of what the later, more polemical books spout, and the characters still ring true. (For example, I'm sure Sim wants the reader to identify completely with Rick in the final confrontation, but my sympathy goes equally, if not moreso, to Jaka.)

It's all downhill from here, (well, Melmoth is fascinating), but this is a legitimately great book. If Dave Sim is the Woody Allen of comics (in the "I prefer his earlier, funnier, less openly mysogynist work" sense), then this is his Annie Hall.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as awesome a read as the first 100 issues but still interesting. Recommended

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earliest Cerebus is pretty throwaway gag stuff, before turning into extremely well-developed and unusual socio-political satire for 3 volumes (I'm told, I still haven't read them). But even during that time, it was, I believe, an adventure story of various episodic action and usual issue-formatting. Things shifted rather dramatically for this one, actually a perfectly-paced and seamlessly cohesive 500-page single self-contained narrative. Various threads mesh tighter and tighter together over hundreds of pages in the essentially three-character pressure-cooker of despair and desperation that is the first half, then the story shifts dramatically, and rethinks itself in ways that mirror and play off of the opening. I can't imagine the planning that must have gone into slowly building this up over multiple years of work in 20-page issues, or the restraint required to maintain the perfect pacing (which seems like it would totally fall apart to any reader getting this issue by issue). I suspect that this is probably the best thing David Sim ever managed, the highwater mark before schizophrenic ranting started exerting a greater hold on his writing. Even here, there are traces of themes that would later become insufferable (he has an unimaginably uninteresting impression of the give and take of married life, even if supposedly based on his own failed marriage). Yet Jaka's character is far too developed and interesting to be overly marred by the restraints that Sim seems to be writing her into. And it is truly her story, not her unsympathetic husband, and not even Cerebus, here laying low and mostly an observer.

[Hamish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is totally unlike the previous volumes of the series. Instead of moving the plot forward, it's a pure character study. Hell, Cerebus barely even appears here. Most of the issues I had with previous volumes don't apply here, this is a totally different beast.

Sim really shines in his characterizations. This kind of slow-moving, domestic drama plays towards the strengths of his art, particularly his talent for facial expressions and body language. The whole thing is beautifully and vividly rendered. Also in terms of his dialogue and story-telling, he just brings everything wonderfully to life. I also love the contrast between the main story in the present and Oscar's prose re-telling of Jaka's past, particularly the parallel twists in each plot towards the end.

However, Sim does kind of falter in the prose. He's clearly studied Wilde very closely, and though he can more or less mimic his style, it's a very hollow mimicry that is lacking in the skill that Wilde had. I also found the story in general to be too straight-forward, like Sim plotted it in a day. He has so much space in these volumes, and yet it's stunning how little use he puts it to (story-wise at least, his art is a different story).

You can also start to see Sim's odious views on women coming to the surface here. And while I don't think that disagreeing with a person's viewpoints is a valid criticism of a work of art, you can't help but roll your eyes a little when they pop up. Still, this is another strong entry in the Cerebus cannon, maybe the last really good one. If you were only interested in the plot of the series, you could easily skip Jaka's Story, but you'd be missing out.

Also, don't under any circumstances read Sim's forward. Just...don't.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's kind of fitting that Dave Sim's best work appears almost dead center in the Cerebus storyline, sandwiched between the adventure stories and critiques of politics and religion (and, more generally, the comic book industry) in the first half, and his more personal, obsessive examinations of religion and gender roles that dominated the second half. (To be fair, I've only read about 4400 pages of the total 6000 page epic, so maybe these comments on the second half are a bit over-broad.)

Sim doesn't shy away from the gender politics that take front seat in (and alienate many from) his later work, but rather incorporates those elements directly into a tiny story about five characters living on an isolated path along a mountain side, in the days following a (temporary) apocalypse.

Still, Dave Sim makes the most compelling argument for his views (valid or not) on matriarchal fascism, and the best elements of his work are all here: Social commentary, religion, autobiography, politics, art, parody (including regular appearances by Oscar Wilde, Groucho Marx, and Margaret Thatcher), repression, the nature of art (or, I think more exactly, the nature of being), and love (in all its most difficult forms.)

If I have a complaint about Jaka's Story, it's that it (as well as the rest of the series) sheds much of the action and intensity from the earlier books. The truth is that after the previous volume, Church & State, Cerebus had changed to something new, that rarely had a place for that kind of storytelling. But what Jaka's Story lacks in action, it more than makes up for in life, humor, horror, and magic...mostly magic.

[The_Mad_Swede · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collecting issues # 114­–136 of Dave Sim's 300 issues limited series Cerebus the Aardvark, this volume follows the two volumes of Church & State. Following the events of that story arc, Cerebus is somewhat depowered and is taking a very passive backseat role in the story. In fact, it could be argued that this is the first Cerebus story which is not really about Cerebus at all. That being said, it is about Jaka, one of the recurring characters in the story so far, and as such the story feels very relevant to the larger story in Cerebus. The story also reveals, through the use of it as a continual backdrop, the fascist matriarchal government of Cirin that has taken over in Iest and that will be of central importance in the Mothers & Daughters storyline later on. This volume interjects the comic with segments of prose accompanied by illustrations which is revealed as (or at least very strongly hinted at being) the character Oscar's "read" (as books are called in the fictional world of Estarcion) entitled "Jaka's Story". The weaving together of these elements telling Jaka's story from a child growing up to leaving the nest with the ongoing comics parts set in Cerebus' present time, in Jaka's mundane life with her partner Rick and current house guest Cerebus a.k.a. Fred, works very well, and the end result is another amazing segment in Sim's fascinating narrative world.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the high points of the Cerebus run, this collection offers parallel narratives of Jaka's childhood (or does it? how "true" is this triply-filtered narrative?) and the aftermath of the Cirinist takeover, with Jaka now married to the shiftless Rick and dancing in Pud Withers's tavern. Main character Cerebus has virtually nothing to do in the entire story except to be a rather awkward house guest, as the story instead focuses on the sexual and social politics associated with girlhood and womanhood. The prose sections are admittedly at times a bit leaden and awkward, but to some extent that's a function of Sim's deliberate choice of an elaborate, pretentious style, itself a commentary on how art functions, which is one of the book's themes. The comics sections include page after page of Sim and Gerhard's masterful sequences. There's lots going on in this book, questions about art and law, feminism--and gender politics generally, reproduction, the slippery nature of truth, and so on, but it's a complex and sophisticated work that rewards careful reading. Recommended.

[Rockito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Say what you want about Sim, this was really though-provoking and full of really dark themes. The fact that he manages to paint the characters in both good-minded and totally morally reprehensible at the same time AND still have some fun with satire and comedy (although granted, less than before) is a testament to Dave's greatness as a story-teller, and the way Gerhards compliments everything with his backgrounds just amps it up to 11.
Easily the strongest Cerebus book so far, totally recommended.

[Elizabeth Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's what's going to happen: you're going to read this book and you're not going to be able to put it down until you're done. And you're going to be really glad you read it. And you're not quite going to understand everything that happens. And it's going to depress the HELL out of you. And you'll love it. That's just the kind of book it is.

[Rob Marney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dave Sim's plots may be eye-rolling, his prose tedious, and his pacing ridiculously decompressed. Set aside the author's failings and feast on a very smart story with jaw-dropping lettering, a small and restrained cast of characters, sumptuous backgrounds from Gerhard, and a really inventive juxtaposition of light novel and comic. Cerebus shuts up for the first time in this volume and the book is much better for it.

Should Sim have built up the final twist until it's believable instead of spending double the pages on every scene? Yes. Should you still read this comic? Yes.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a feat of cartooning, Church And State was all about creating a sense of unstoppable momentum, Dave Sim taking advantage of his new partnership with Gerhard to produce some of his most fluid, gorgeously readable work yet, and integrating all his techniques - from caricature to wordless dream sequences to comic relief - in the service of a baroque fantasy epic that accelerates across 1100 pages before coming to a dead stop with an audacious five-issue monologue set on the moon.

Jaka's Story flips the script. It, and its companion-stroke-epilogue Melmoth, swap acceleration for stasis, showcasing two more of Sim's favoured techniques: the 'decompressed' telling of small actions (dressing, housework, playing games) across extended sequences, and the use of blocks of text alongside illustrations. This latter was a fascination of Sim's as far back as the "Silverspoon" Prince Valiant pastiches in Vol.1, but it becomes an increasingly important part of his practice as a creator from this volume on. Alongside the 'present day' story of a shellshocked Cerebus taking refuge with Jaka and her husband and her work as a tavern dancer, we get excerpts from a book - which turns out to be written by another character in the story* - about Jaka's childhood as a child of privilege.

Compared to some of Sim's later forays into illustrated (and increasingly non-illustrated) text, the "Daughter Of Palnu" parts of Jaka's Story have a good reputation. But they're by a distance the weakest parts of the book, even though Gerhard in particular does a tremendous job on detailing the palace interiors of Jaka's girlhood (his work on the covers of Cerebus in this phase is exquisite, too). Like many comics writers who switch to prose, the writing is prolix and overdone, a chore to wade through especially since the comics pages are paced with such care and precision. There is some story payoff, but the prose sections don't add a lot to our understanding of Jaka's character either - what there is on the page in the comic sections does the job more than well enough.

Jaka has up to this point been one of the weaker aspects of Cerebus - the lead character's love interest, who shows up at important moments in the plot to engage in an issue or two of shameless melodrama, much beloved of the early Cerebus fandom. As the one serious recurring character, she played a semi-useful role as a kind of yardstick for how low Cerebus had sunk (or how high he'd risen), but the lip-trembling mawkishness of the Jaka issues was an early alarm bell that writing relationships between men and women would not be a Dave Sim strong point.**

An entire 20-issue sequence devoted to her didn't seem appealing. But the comics section of Jaka's story is a tour de force. There's always been a lot of talk about how comics are cinematic, but cinema is hardly the only way of combining words and images: Jaka's Story is a rare example of a comic which is theatrical. It mostly limits itself to a small cast - Cerebus, Jaka, her husband Rick, their landlord Mr Withers, and Rick's friend Oscar, a writer - and a handful of locations: Withers' tavern, Jaka and Rick's house, and the roadside between them. It even has an explicit three-act structure, though the third act introduces two new characters and locations.

Doing comics as theatre lets Sim concentrate on the cadences and rhythms of his dialogue - which he excels at - and the relationships between the characters, all of which are based to some extent on thwarted desire. Jaka's Story is a farce which ends up as a tragedy - Rick and Jaka are together, but Cerebus and Withers both want Jaka and Oscar wants Rick. For all the similarities to a stage production, though, Sim is able to use techniques unique to comics to create drama of a kind you can't easily get in the theatre - the increasingly chilling scenes where Withers rehearses conversations he wants to have with Jaka, for instance.

Meanwhile, the conflict you imagine you're going to get - Cerebus' presence upsetting Jaka's life - turns out to be misdirection, as the fateful acts the characters take largely have nothing to do with him, and he's offstage well before the denouement. The scenes in which everything falls apart are genuinely shocking and painful even when you know they're coming: the remaining issues, of imprisonment and interrogation for members of the cast, are brutally powerful.

They also bring into focus a major theme of the middle chunk of Cerebus - life under a fascist system. The Cirinist occupation of Iest is totalitarian and has impoverished much of the population, but Jaka's Story is adept at making you forget they're there until Sim wants you to remember. Until that point it's a story about everyday life in a time of shortages, state controls, and gestapo justice, and a compelling one - Jaka's Story is boring not just because Cerebus himself is at the mother of all loose ends at this point, but because the Cromwellian social orders imposed by Cirin have leeched opportunity and joy from the comic's world. For the next books to work, we as readers have to hate the Cirinists at least somewhat, and Jaka's Story certainly accomplishes that.

At this point, the actual nature of the Cirinists isn't as important as the recognisably oppressive ways their presence distorts the story. Dave Sim will have increasingly strong and strange ideas about what a fascist matriarchy would entail, but in Jaka's Story they don't really affect the comic until near the end. Sim in interviews has revisited the closing issues of Jaka's Story in the light of his later religious and personal convictions and said, basically, he thinks the Cirinist interrogator Mrs Thatcher is in the right in her arguments (and in her revelations to Rick). It's not being charitable to Sim's later views to say that this really isn't how it actually reads: for all you suspect Sim is sympathetic to Rick at the end, Thatcher is played as an out-and-out villain, and the ending is another brutal removal of agency from a character defined by her lack of it and desperation to have it. A tragic conclusion to the bleakest sequence in Cerebus' first half.

*At the start of Melmoth, another character talks about how good the supposed book is and lays out for the inattentive reader why Sim (sorry, Oscar) made particular stylistic choices. It's amusingly peevish - perhaps reader criticism had, for once, stung a little.

**Let's hope he doesn't go and make it the driving force of the comic, eh?

[Kyle Burley · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the increasingly epic and complex storylines of "High Society" and "Church & State" Dave Sim, radically reduced the scope of the story to a small indoor drama. Shoving his main character to the side for almost a year, Sim focused his attention on Jaka Nash(nee Travers)a poor tavern dancer of noble origin and Cerebus' primary love interest. The biographical flashbacks to her youthful life of secluded privilege are fascinating and insightful, while the present day story is full of nicely observed domestic comedy. Cerebus himself is mostly an observer but notable new characters include Jaka's husband Rick, a feckless but entirely good young man, a repressed tavern owner named Withers, and a poet named Oscar, who's last name is never given but I'm guessing it's "Wilde".
Frequently moving, often funny, ultimately tragic. Another masterpiece.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume collects issues 114-136 of the series. Cerebus takes a back seat here, becoming a minor character and actually disappearing for the last quarter of the book - not that it detracts from the story. I have heard and read many people claim that Jaka’s Story is the pinnacle of his artistic achievement in art and story. In this volume also the author begins his award-winning expressive use of lettering and speech balloons to illustrate the character’s verbal rhythms and intonations.

Cerebus has returned to Earth, his empire, religious and secular, destroyed. The city-state of Inest, the largest in the world, has been overrun by Cirin and her religious fanatics. They are roaming about the city killing and maiming all those who will not bend the knee to the new faith of female supremacy. Men executed, men disfigured, men mutilating their genitals to join the new priesthood. It is commented on that most of the torture is confined to the poorer areas who cannot defend themselves- thus showing the true cowardice of the movement. Cerebus finds himself alone and in need of shelter from those who must surely be hunting him.

The Cirinist movement is a violent sex-negative feminist sect with fascistic goals and an ideology determined to ground down a person’s soul until they are nothing but a ball of conformity. Women, especially mothers, are at the top of the food chain with everyone else expected to bow before them. Convinced that all men are on the verge raping women if their passions are aroused, their violent rhetoric is dove-tailed with certain elements of Islamic extremism. Cirinists dress in burqas, revealing only their eyes and act in a sort of Police of Vice and Virtue manner, committing summary executions on the spot for minor crimes, especially any hint of sexuality. It is interesting that the author had been discussing and warning us of what is now the norm for fourth-wave intersectional feminism at least two decades before it emerged. He saw the writing on the wall.

The action takes a jolt, or come to a screeching halt depending on your opinion, and a detour in style. Cerebus, back from a jaunt to the moon, spends the next 25 issues mooning over his lost love Jaka. The extraordinary events of the past issues not phasing him a bit- or changing him. Cerebus, if anything, is the static character. Previously the action revolved around mystic prophecies, armies warring, political intrigue, betrayal, magic, and murder. Now it changes to emotional, rather than physical danger. A love triangle between her, Cerebus, and her unemployable husband Rick (technically a quintangle if we add their neighbor’s lust for Rick, as well as Jaka’s employer Pud secret covetous attitude toward her as well).

This alternating of the tone is fitting to the character of Jaka. She had voluntarily given up her life of pomp and privilege to live simply and dance, diverging her power from the reaction of crowd swooning over her. As such, a story focusing almost exclusively on her would not involve world shattering events, but be a celebration of the mundanity of life, the in-between the exciting moments.

The tone of these issues reflects the quiet before the storm. Alternating between a, possibly exaggerated, narrative account of her upbringing in Palnu under the Groucho Marx analogue Lord Julius, to her current existence dancing in a forgotten inn and shacking up with Rick and Cerebus, who add nothing to the larder. It is painfully apparent that this state of affairs cannot stay as it is. The bar has no business, Pud’s lust will boil over, Rick will need to grow up or end his marriage, Jaka will have to move on elsewhere, and Cerebus will have to flee or be captured by Cirinist forces.

We are introduced to two new characters in this arc. One being Oscar, not-so-loosely based on Oscar Wilde. Who is secretly writing Jaka’s story based on conversations with her husband and his command of dialogue and body language. As such the stories from Jaka’s past, while factually correct, are possibly misinterpreted emotionally. The author does an excellent job capturing Wilde’s flamboyant, yet refined, style. And in the prose sections he captures Wilde’s style almost exactly with an overabundance of detail in every single act, which simultaneously casts a critical eye on their respective society.

Next we have Rick, Jaka’s childlike husband. He is a well meaning goof. A typical guy in his early 20’: Unable to get a job, doesn’t really to get a job, hanging with the boys is the highlight of his day. Rick is completely without ambition and guile, which is why I suspect Jaka claimed him. He is the exact opposite of any man she grew up around, someone she could dominate, and as a rebellion against an uncaring “daddy” figure. Their relationship is strained, sexual, and punctuated with lots and lots of arguing. In short, it feels very real.

The prose and visual mediums, while seemingly on alternate topics, connect on the theme of minor triumphs that escape the pages of the history book and make up the majority of our lives. Rick’s obsession with tossing a ball into a wastepaper basket, Pud mental recital of how he will declare his love\lust for Jaka and nearly making it (until she vomits on him), Cerebus’s drifting nature, Oscar’s story of young Jaka’s first feeble rebellion, the opening of a forbidden door- a triumph for her, barely notied by anyone else.

The ending does offer a different aspect on Jaka, tarnishing her golden girl image. She is shown to be willing to allow others to suffer or be placed in danger to further her own selfish ends. As long as she feels happy the ends justify the means. This attitude leads to the deaths or ruin of every other character in this arc.

[B. Herndon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good and interesting. It's a shame that this is (from what I've heard) the peak of the series and it goes badly downhill after this one. The series really seemed liked it was building up to something really interesting and unique. I'll still probably give the one after this a look but I haven't heard great things so I'm wary.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet and beautiful. The Jaka/Cerebus love stories are the finest examples of human/aardvark inter species romances extant.

[Nick Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dave Sim is wrong about his own characters, but he wrote the story so well that it doesn't matter.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I was rating just the first two thirds of this book, then I'd give it another star or two. A tale of domesticity and relationship beautifully illustrated and minimally written, with an intertwined story of Jaka growing up (the weaker of the two stories).

Unfortunately, the larger story intrudes at this point and Jaka's Story switches from domesticity to the terror of a totalitarian state and the psychological torture and manipulation that it can deploy. All written through the lens of an increasingly apparent misogyny on the part of the writer.

I would have been far more interested in seeing how the relationship between Rick, Jaka, and Oscar would have turned out without this intervention. I have to suspect that part of the reason for the shift at this point, is that the writer would have to have acknowledged that Rick was as flawed as everyone else in the story, and was not as "good and thoroughly decent" as he claims in the introduction were he to deal with the aftermath of Rick having divulged Jaka's life story to Oscar without her permission.

As for Cerebus himself, he plays a minor role in the first part of the story, and none whatsoever in the second. The first part seems to attempt to re-humanize the character somewhat following his rather inhuman portrayal of the Church & State story line. If this was the intent, I think it worked somewhat in the original serialized story back when I first read these as they came out monthly, but fails when read back to back like this.

[slauderdale]

Jaka's Story, or Jaka Stories?

("Is that clever?" "It is perfectly phrased!")

We have here several takes on Jaka: Jaka in her day to day life, Jaka's self-image as a Dancer, object of Pud's obsession, Cerebus' One True Love, Mrs. Thatcher's withering assessment, and of course the florid novel-in-progress by Oscar, culled and embellished from stories told by Rick. Throw in my take on this book as I read it back in the day, with sympathy for all of the principles (excepting Mrs. Thatcher) versus my experience reading it now, overladen by everything that I know is coming afterward. A parting epilogue with two unpleasant female domestics seems consciously thrown in to make sure we know it isn't *just* Cirinists, that this is a Woman thing. Leaving me to wonder if the parts that I just saw as making Jaka a human being are strictly intended to show her in a meaner light; if Sim is holding her out, like in one reviewer's take, as the self-absorbed architect of everyone else's destruction.

And yet, that reunion in the prison, with her old nurse, and the love that emanates from Ada Talbot. I have always remembered that, and I think that entire episode may be the part that stood out for me most on reading it again: lasting love, and a cautionary tale about trusting an author, any author, without reservation.

[Shehroze Ameen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read. Although the character of Jaka, and the general adult nature of her relationship with Rick and Cerebus makes this unaccessible to audiences below 18, it is still a good work following up not just with the character growth of Cerebus, but also with universe building. Even giving us a feel of how "reads" works in this universe. Frankly, the twist in which it is discovered that Melmoth (the equivalent of Oscar Wilde in universe) was writing the stories of Jaka and publishing them because of his friendship with Rick, actually gives a lot of depth to the universe of Cerebus and also gives us a rationale as to how the next book is to be considered. It also gives the story of Jaka, and why Cerebus, in the context of this book, has feelings for her.

We are also introduced to the complete nervous breakdown of Roach in this book.

Overall, a must read, and one which gives a certain depth to the remainder of the books.

[Gilly Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jaka is easily one of my favourite characters of the series, alongside Lord Julius. It is fitting that they're lives are so intertwined with the former being the latter's niece. Jaka's life is tragic in its own way and, similar to Cerebus in previous volumes, you get the impression that she is a victim and prisoner of the circumstances in which she finds herself. She does her best and in truth is one of few characters in the series who genuinely feels like she does not have a malicious bone in her body. That being said, she is not immune to the pressures of living a life.

This volume could be read as a stand alone graphic novel. The story is not dependant on earlier works for the reader to understand the characters, their motivations or actions.

It does provide an excellent continuation of the wider Cerebus saga though as well as demonstrating Dave Sim's ability to tell a story in diverse ways with considered pacing.

[Thomas Radigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cirinists have taken over in Cerebus's absence, leaving him to wander...until he reaches an isolated mountainside tavern run by Pud Withers, supposedly too remote for the Cirinists to bother with. Jaka works as an exotic dancer there, whose only audience is Pud, and staying there besides Jaka is her no-good husband Rick, as well as Oscar (a representation of Oscar Wilde). Cerebus stays with them, and in the first half of the story, Jaka's childhood is described. Cerebus ends up going to buy paint when he overhears Jaka implicitly rebuking him for being lazy like Rick and is embarrassed by it, and in his absence, the Cirinists arrive.

The story is emotional and genuinely scary in parts, but suffers from too much overwritten text which slows everything down too much. Indeed, this latter fact is what would eventually bring the whole series down.

[Vincent Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best feminist (yet somehow masculine?) works I’ve ever read.

Cerebus is hardly in this and it works wonders. Cerebus is a great character but the fact that Dave gave us this much backstory to Jaka and her life, makes her that much more of an appealing and relatable character.

“Jakas story” is told through the eyes (mostly) of Oscar Wilde but also through interactions with Cerebus and Rick and Pud. It extremely innovative to me and says alot about women as a sex that Jakas Story is told by everyone EXCEPT Jaka.

Finishing this leaves me at issue #139/300 which means I’ve read almost 15 years of Dave’s work now. I REALLY hope he’s not as bad as everyone says he gets later on because as of right now (after Jakas story) it’s hard for me to believe he’s anything less than one of the all time greats in not only comic writing but story telling

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

there's a panel here where one character says something, and the character they're speaking to put their hand up to their ear and asks them to speak up, and in doing so he grasps the speech bubble he's asking to be repeated in that hand. sim is a natural at comics, so the acceleration which has already begun at this point into vehement misogyny is all the more disappointing.

the vast scale at which the 300 issues allows sim to work is wonderful here, although one can understand the frustrations of contemporary readers who could go months at time with issues with hardly any dialogue or action of any kind. but taken in all at once the narrative decompression is completely unique

[Mirror · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some rather nice descriptions, though the prose in those sections can be a little clunky, and the reunion between Jaka and her nurse is quite touching, but whilst others may be more tolerant of authorial variety I wasn't expecting what has been described of the later Sim to be very much manifest already here, rendering the work more a material phenomenon than an emotional adventure.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. A LOT more serious than previous chapters.
Sometimes there is annoying amount of finely printed text which is, of course, integral to the story. The page layouts are extraordinary, especially the aforementioned text-heavy pages.

[Martin Maenza · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting, a very different kind of story. This read much more like a novel. Definitely better to have read this in a single volume rather than as a monthly comic.

[Andrew Barnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wild and weird and moving ride this book is.

[Jonathan Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It tore my heart out. So moving, so sad. Such wonderful writing, such wonderful art.

[Michael Brady · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I'mma stop here.