Going Home

Cerebus #13

by Dave Sim

Reprinting Cerebus Issues 232-250

Cerebus and Jaka travel towards his home village but don't get there. Instead it offers an extended critique/partiche of the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, as F. Stop Kennedy.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Fantasy, Fiction, Adventure, Satire, Politics

386 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2000

About the author

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

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well the downhill slide on this series continues. Not a good read at all. Not recommended

[Ed Erwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally the story gets back on track! The last 3 volumes were a slog. I was dreading this one, but it turned out to be one of my favorites, second only to Jaka's Story.

In this one most of the interest comes not from Jaka herself; she is a bit of a blank slate here. The interesting character is F. Stop Kennedy who clearly represents F. Scott Fitzgerald, late in his life, after Zelda is in a sanatorium and he has changed from fun drunk to bitter drunk. It is very meta. When we see what F. Stop is writing in his novel, the characters are clearly versions of himself, Jaka, and Cerebus, and he is also trying to woo Jaka away from Cerebus. Separating out which ideas are Sim's thoughts about Fitzgerald and Zelda, from what are Sim's actual thoughts about himself and his ex-wife, from what is just part of the Jaka story is probably impossible. It is probably just a hall of mirrors reflecting itself over and over. But the amazing art, including as always amazing lettering, makes a beautiful reflection.

F. Stop fantasizing about wooing Jaka is eerily reminiscent of an even less savory character fantasizing about her in Jaka's Story. And since they are all traveling through a repressive matriarchal society where they are being spied on telepathically, there is very real danger. Even though he has a valid government license to write fiction: "... it remains to be decided if the commission of the high crime of adultery on the printed page is to be punished with the same severity as the crime itself." (I.e., castration followed by execution.)

As the great Cirin's law code says: 'Potential harassment is intended harassment is actual harassment.' (Sim is by his own admission anti-feminist.)

The small text is painful on an old man's eyes. But it is worth it. The lettering alone is enough to make this special.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going Home is really three books. This volume contains the first two, the short-ish "Sudden Moves" and "Fall And The River", while the third part "Form & Void" gets the next phonebook to itself. "Sudden Moves" picks up where Rick's Story left off. Cerebus and Jaka are heading north to Cerebus' home of Sand Hills Creek to start a life together there. They are in the first flush of love, the giddy, exhilarated, laughing part, as they walk from tavern to tavern. Jaka appears to have a kind of celebrity, engendered by her 'royal' background in Palnu and the success of Oscar's Read, and thus the journey is facilitated by the Cirinists, who keep a watchful eye on them throughout. This section shows us what Cirinist-controlled Estarcion looks like from outside the pubs of Guys. I don't really know how long Cerebus spent in that pub, but this is a settled revolution now. Society has remodelled itself, or been remodelled, and, in these parts at least, it looks like a fairly peaceful agrarian lifestyle. Unless you step out of line, of course, as one unfortunate finds out in Jaka's wake. There are other clouds on the horizon. Jaka says early on "Of course this is the 'beginning' part. The 'beginning' part is easy. We'll have to see how 'lucky' either of us feels after we've had a chance to really get on each other's nerves". These chances soon begin to pile up. Cerebus is exasperated at their slow progress, while Jaka struggles with not being able to buy new clothes daily (this is one thing in the book which never really rang true to me - the girl who turned her back on aristocratic privilege to become a tavern dancer with a no mark husband is now stressing about her outfits? Nah. I'm prepared to concede that her experiences at the end of Jaka's Story and beyond would have had a huge effect on her, but I'm still not buying that).


They end up taking a barge upriver, which leads to part two, "Fall And The River". Our travelling companion is Dave Sim's next literary steal - F. Scott Fitzgerald, here rendered as F. Stop. Kennedy. We are now treated to 220 pages of Cerebus and Jaka travelling slowly upriver and having mealtime conversations with Kennedy, interspersed with Dave's versions of Fitzgerald's prose presented as Kennedy's work in progress, an obvious roman a clef about Cerebus, Jaka and himself. This is where I remember Cerebus beginning to nosedive, as Dave jammed whatever had caught his attention at the moment into the story, relevant to the aardvark or not. It's what I was talking about upthread when I suggested the quality of the book falls away dramatically after issue 220 or thereabouts.

You know what? I was wrong. I really enjoyed "Fall And The River". There's a great deal of pleasure to be had observing the ebb and flow of attraction and the cut and thrust of dialogue between the three principals. The restricted setting and the limited number of characters give it the feeling of a play, watching these characters circle each other until the ultimate collision (this is, of course, much of the reason Jaka's Story worked so well). Kennedy is clearly making a play for Jaka, and he dangles the promise of a role as patroness of his putative artists' colony in front of her. This is so appealing to Jaka's vision of herself, especially when stacked up against sharing a house in the back of beyond with Cerebus' parents and being expected to do nothing beyond cooking and cleaning, which is what the aardvark has to offer.

It's sad, really. Cerebus knows he doesn't have a clue what makes Jaka tick. He's just smart enough to know that something is going wrong, not smart enough to know what it is, and either fix it or walk away. He clings to Rick's "you have to be happy enough for two" mantra throughout the book, but it doesn't - can't- work. Matters come to a head when Kennedy reads aloud a passage clearly based on the fragile relationship we saw Jaka embark on back in Mothers & Daughters. It's a seismic event in the relationship, cleverly communicated on the page by an irruption of the Juno landscape into the idyllic river setting. It's a point of no return, and it certainly looks like the end of the road for Jaka and Cerebus.

Earlier in the book, one of the Cirinists had intimated to Jaka that Cerebus could easily be got rid of if that was what she wanted, and this comes back into play as the boat prepares to dock for the last time and Jaka rehearses her break up speech. There are dozens of armed troops waiting with the obvious intention of capturing or killing Cerebus. The aardvark, oblivious, heads down the gangplank to his fate...until Jaka realises what is happening, runs after him in a panic and walks him through the garrison as if they are still very much together, leaving Kennedy and her dreams of patronage behind. This is the very reverse of Jaka's Story. In that book, Jaka's wilful selfishness endangers all around her, but here she turns her back on her dream and sacrifices her hopes in the name of saving Cerebus, impossibly bleak future with him or not.

I'm honestly surprised at how much I liked this book, especially the second part. As I've said, this is where I thought Cerebus began to tail off badly, at least in a narrative sense. It is, of course, technically stunning. The draughtmanship and cartooning throughout is top notch. Dave and Ger expand the vocabulary of comics on almost every page, and some of the sequences (the vista of post-catastrophe Iest, the 360 degree pan around the dinner table) are mindblowingly good. And yet, this time round, I also found a lot more to enjoy in the story. There's no cosmic mystery, no grand political scheming, but there is a terrifically well observed relationship drama. It's a chamber piece instead of the widescreen epics we were offered up to #200, but it's a really good chamber piece. So where, if anywhere, does the drop off come? I'll let you know after Form And Void....

(It's also worth noting that this is the first Cerebus volume to feature annotations at the back. How much you get out of them will depend on how keen you are on Fitzgerald, but once you get past the weight of the research Dave dumps onto the page, there are some interesting insights to be had, and some valauble context for Kennedy's words and actions in the story. I've always wished that Dave would go back and do this for all the earlier books, a kind of director's commentary, but I don't think it will ever happen.)

[Rockito · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the weirdest of the bunch, which is saying a lot. Not because of supernatural elements or any religious allegory, just because of the way Sim framed Cerebus' and Jaka's story with the Fitzgerald stuff. I much prefered how he did it in Melmoth. Still good though, and I feel I might enjoy it more on a second reading.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thirteenth volume in this series, collecting issues 232-250 of Cerebus. Upon my first reading of this series a decade and some change ago, I was under the belief that this is the volume where the series officially jumped the shark. There was no going back and it was all downhill from here. I do have to amend my position after the second reading and state that the Fonzie daredevil moment has to be knocked back one volume and the title awarded to Rick’s Story. I was not nearly as bored as I was reading Rick’s Story, having to push myself to get through all of the material. Groaning as I picked up the book and cursing myself as a masochist.

The second reflection brought about all of the subtle nuances of the text which I had missed the first time. Jaka, having reunited with Cerebus, is now a Princess Diana character, a celebrity, famous for being famous. Her popularity is due to the book published about her by the Oscar Wilde character many many issues ago. She is now everyone’s darling, the idol of beauty, and can spend her days buying new clothes and being fabulous. But there exists a darker element in her character. A self-centeredness that no amount of frivolous clothes shopping can chase away. She is under the impression that the relationship should serve her happiness and that Cerebus is an afterthought. As Rick told Cerebus before, “All you have to be is twice as happy as anyone else and you can keep her for as long as you want.” Well this is Cerebus, one of the most brooding characters in all of comic history. The relationship is obviously doomed…. Just not in this volume.

The alcoholic delusions-of-grandeur of F. Stop Kennedy (the series' analogue to F. Scott Fitzgerald) bring a whole host of problems, at least in the mind of Jaka. Cerebus, having giving up conquest, wants to return home to his rustic northern homestead and build a house there.

Jaka is going along with him due to love, but also because there is nothing else for her. She is the celebrity without a cause. A vapid and vacant beacon of beauty. Kennedy offers her a position as patroness of an artist colony where she can fritter away her life in a pretend land of parties, while Cerebus’s is full of practicality and hard work, of man overcoming the elements and finding meaning through strife. Guess which one turns the princess’s head the most? It is story of hidden meanings and subtle innuendos, verging on an emotional apocalypse. Our hero rides out the storm by not noticing that there is one.

The most interesting part of the book is the appendix on the author’s research into F. Scott Fitzgerald. He openly admits he was inspired by the appendix included in the From Hell graphic novel, by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. While many of his reflections on the inspiration for this and that minor detail is interesting, what really makes this the best part of the book is that Sim can’t help editorializing. So we get a look at his research methods and material, which is impressive- or at least more than I would have done-, his analysis on Scott’s writing style, and his two cents on Zelda.

This is the best written prose work I’ve read by the author. It contrasts sharply with the prose sections in this volume by F. Stop Kennedy which are florid and overwritten as usual. The appendix are straight, to the point, without any showing off or extraneous flairs. In short, he doesn’t try too hard with these. If he could have translated this sort of writing style into the regular text then he have gotten the series to become a hit again, or at least prevent it from plummeting as fast.

One of the many minor things I have to disagree with the author about Fitzgerald is his listing of the three great novels by the author as The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, and The Beautiful and the Damned. In fact he seems to focus on the last volume almost exclusively for inspiration for this volume. And the Fitzgerald characterized here seems to be of the sort who could live within its pages.

I won’t go into too much detail, but I always considered The Beautiful and the Damned one of the least of his works. Much of the novel reads like it was ripped from Zelda’s diary. The characters aren’t likeable, but not bad enough to be interesting antiheroes. And certainly the book is not worthy of being listed as among Fitzgerald’s best.

Tender is the Night is his best work, followed by The Great Gatsby and if pushed I would have to say the third was A Diamond as Big as the Ritz. Or if you discount that due to it being a novella, the distant third would be This Side of Paradise. If anyone who reads this hasn’t glanced through Tender is the Night please do so. It is a romantic novel, a heartbreaking one, and this recommendation comes from a person that dislikes romantic stories. So allow me to say it is a cut above the genre.

[Tom Ewing · Rating 3 out of 5]

And then, to my surprise, Cerebus got good again.

Caveats abound, as they do with all post-Reads Cerebus. The central problem of "do you trust Dave Sim to write a story about men and women?" remains. There are still plenty of in-jokey caricatures of Sim's fellow comics creators, which work to slow down an already sedate opening section. And I don't know how someone with more familiarity with F.Scott Fitzgerald would react to his portrait here as F. Stop Kennedy, the central figure of the second half of this book - for the purposes of the story he's a vain, ageing drunk who was also once a great talent, and that's how I read him.

But the central material here is good, sometimes very good. It's Sim's best shot at telling a relatable, human-scale story since Jaka's Story, which Going Home is often a strange mirror of: another story of Jaka's ambitions clashing with her partner's, another story of a writer hoping to use her as a ladder to his own success (in this case F.Stop combines the roles of Pud and Oscar, since he's also infatuated with her), and another book built around the constant, only sometimes visible presence of the Cirinists.

Fans of the more dynamic, Cerebus-centered books saw this one as final confirmation Sim was never going back to those days - yet another slow book full of tavern stays, literary pastiches and long stretches of nothing happening. And true, a plot summary is simple enough. Cerebus and Jaka are in love, and heading North to Cerebus' home village of Sand Hills Creek. They're under constant observation by the Cirinists, not so much because of Cerebus' former status but because Jaka is a noblewoman with immense potential to aid or embarrass the regime. After a forced change to their travel plans they board a Cirinist barge, whose other passenger is the middle-aged writer F.Stop Kennedy, drowning his sorrows in gin. Kennedy and the Cirinists would both like to separate Jaka from Cerebus, and their separate plans give the book its rising tension as the barge travels through eerie, ruined landscapes.

It's a straightforward book but even that summary shows there's plenty going on, even if it's not 'action' in the traditional sense. For me, Going Home has Sim getting the balance between activity and reverie exactly right - not much is directly happening at any point, but every issue moves the emotional story along or puts new pieces in place as the story moves toward its climax.

That climax, centred on a moment of sudden decision for Jaka, is in some ways an inversion of her actions in Jaka's Story: if you thought her choices in that book were selfish, and Sim at least might agree, you may think what she does here shows growth, or is even a redemptive action. If you were more kindly inclined to Jaka there, her choices here might read more tragically. But the point is that it feels like a moment of genuine choice, with costs in either direction, deriving from and affecting events within the wider Going Home storyline, and with resonances back along her previous appearances. Not everything Sim does with Jaka's character here is positive, and much feels overdone - her obsession with new clothes, for instance - but Going Home is much more her story than her eponymous volume: the point where she finally transcends her melodramatic role and becomes a genuine female lead.

As for Cerebus himself, this is - after his stints as Prime Minister and Pope - another story where he gets what he wants and finds it doesn't make him happy (though for much of Going Home he really is as happy as we ever see him). He's doggedly optimistic about his and Jaka's future, even as he's plagued by dreams, visions and memories of Rick's advice which make him realise how difficult things might really be. And the grit in the gears - in this book at least - isn't Sim's gender politics, it's something Cerebus has never really touched on: class. Going Home is about a mismatched love affair - a rough-hewn country boy and a posh girl who yearns for freedom. Can he offer her what she needs? Does she really understand what she's getting into? What happens when an older man of letters offers her something more sophisticated?

This is fairly basic romance comic territory - the kind of bare-bones triangular plot you'll see to this day in potboilers or Hallmark movies. And this is what stops Going Home really soaring - while Jaka and Cerebus and even Kennedy feel like realer and more vivid characters than we've seen in the comic for years, the situations they're in are banal. Jaka's choice at the end works as drama because of its resonance with other choices and her history with Cerebus, not as a trite decision between two suitors. But both Jaka's and Cerebus' characters here become a little more stereotypical to make the plots work - Jaka more flippant, Cerebus more pigheaded. Going Home is Sim's best try yet at writing a love story, albeit one which is loading its dice for things to go wrong next time. But even before his declaration of Anti-Feminism in Reads, romance wasn't Sim's strongest suit: you realise that Jaka's Story is so effective partly because he never actually has to bring any of the story's frustrated infatuations to a head before the Cirinists crash into the plot.

Even so, with the possible exception of Minds, this is the best Cerebus has been since Melmoth, a late flowering against multiple odds. Gerhard, finally out of the pub and off the leash, plays more than his part, with a long, slow pan across the post-catastrophe landscape of Iest one of the comic's most beautiful (and oddly moving) sequences ever. He and Sim do a fantastic job on the pages where F. Stop Kennedy sits on the barge in an alcoholic haze, the text of his thoughts breaking and inverting, smearing letters across nighttime landscapes as he drowns himself in gin. After an entire book of noisy drunks, Sim finds a way to use his skill to capture quiet, melancholy drunkenness just as well.

"Is later Cerebus worth reading?" people ask. As a complete body of work... well, we'll see. But I think if you enjoyed Jaka's Story, then yes, Going Home at least is worth reading as a sequel that doesn't quite match its model for impact, but builds well on its mood and ideas.

[slauderdale]

Paused for a long time on Going Home. I remember the Ernest Hemingway stuff coming up and the termination of Form and Void, but I guess I didn't remember much of this volume at all. The first 166 pages read like a slow-burn horror story as Cerebus comes to a new assessment of who Jaka is, or what Dave Sim now conceives her to be, which could feel revelatory but in practice sits somewhat oddly with how she has heretofore been depicted.

Sim told Cerebus at one point that a creator can observe his creation's actions but cannot cannot read his creation's thoughts - incidentally, can someone tell me where the hell this is? Because I cannot find it, and I really don't think I'm making it up, and yet it is such a weird thing to say, given the many thought bubbles. Of course he talks elsewhere about the insidious power of women to read minds and in some instances change them: this is, interestingly, a power that Sim exercises in-story with Cerebus - see Minds ("I can move outside your head. And then back in. I can make you forget things ... I can make you remember...") and Rick's Story (the bar interlude, when he changes Cerebus' thoughts several times in the course of their conversation; Jaka has an interesting story to relate about this herself, when she talks about botched attempts to buy a drink at several bars, eventually steering her to Cerebus' place.) So is Sim trying to change readerly thoughts and memories of Jaka with a new incarnation of Jaka? Who is being meta-haunted by the ghost of Zelda Fitzgerald, or whatever we are supposed to infer from the "Goofo" scene?

Incidentally, that's why I paused so long in my re-read, as F. Stop Kennedy waits for his introduction. The only F. Scott Fitzgerald I had ever read was The Great Gatsby; seemed like a good excuse to break from Cerebus for a while and expand my acquaintance with this eminent chronicler of the Jazz Age. Can now claim This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned and "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz."

-.-.-.-

Wow. I enjoyed that ("Fall and the River" section) and am surprised that I didn't remember it. It may just not have made an impact on me due to my lack of familiarity with Fitzgerald at the time, but since I didn't remember the first 166 pages either, that doesn't mean much. Some interesting choices, like I wasn't sure what he was getting at with F. Stop Kennedy's psychic echoes of Weisshaupt, and I'm kind of surprised he didn't touch on that in his Notes. (And speaking of those, wow. Plenty that was interesting or fun, but the bitter coming off those! I'd love to CTRL+F all the uses of "henhouse" and "unfairer sex" and sweeping statements about All Women. Those didn't feel emotional or cast doubt on his distinction between misogynistic and Anti-Feminist at all.)

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

And then, to my surprise, Cerebus got good again.

Caveats abound, as they do with all post-Reads Cerebus. The central problem of "do you trust Dave Sim to write a story about men and women?" remains. There are still plenty of in-jokey caricatures of Sim's fellow comics creators, which work to slow down an already sedate opening section. And I don't know how someone with more familiarity with F.Scott Fitzgerald would react to his portrait here as F. Stop Kennedy, the central figure of the second half of this book - for the purposes of the story he's a vain, ageing drunk who was also once a great talent, and that's how I read him.

But the central material here is good, sometimes very good. It's Sim's best shot at telling a relatable, human-scale story since Jaka's Story, which Going Home is often a strange mirror of: another story of Jaka's ambitions clashing with her partner's, another story of a writer hoping to use her as a ladder to his own success (in this case F.Stop combines the roles of Pud and Oscar, since he's also infatuated with her), and another book built around the constant, only sometimes visible presence of the Cirinists.

Fans of the more dynamic, Cerebus-centered books saw this one as final confirmation Sim was never going back to those days - yet another slow book full of tavern stays, literary pastiches and long stretches of nothing happening. And true, a plot summary is simple enough. Cerebus and Jaka are in love, and heading North to Cerebus' home village of Sand Hills Creek. They're under constant observation by the Cirinists, not so much because of Cerebus' former status but because Jaka is a noblewoman with immense potential to aid or embarrass the regime. After a forced change to their travel plans they board a Cirinist barge, whose other passenger is the middle-aged writer F.Stop Kennedy, drowning his sorrows in gin. Kennedy and the Cirinists would both like to separate Jaka from Cerebus, and their separate plans give the book its rising tension as the barge travels through eerie, ruined landscapes.

It's a straightforward book but even that summary shows there's plenty going on, even if it's not 'action' in the traditional sense. For me, Going Home has Sim getting the balance between activity and reverie exactly right - not much is directly happening at any point, but every issue moves the emotional story along or puts new pieces in place as the story moves toward its climax.

That climax, centred on a moment of sudden decision for Jaka, is in some ways an inversion of her actions in Jaka's Story: if you thought her choices in that book were selfish, and Sim at least might agree, you may think what she does here shows growth, or is even a redemptive action. If you were more kindly inclined to Jaka there, her choices here might read more tragically. But the point is that it feels like a moment of genuine choice, with costs in either direction, deriving from and affecting events within the wider Going Home storyline, and with resonances back along her previous appearances. Not everything Sim does with Jaka's character here is positive, and much feels overdone - her obsession with new clothes, for instance - but Going Home is much more her story than her eponymous volume: the point where she finally transcends her melodramatic role and becomes a genuine female lead.

As for Cerebus himself, this is - after his stints as Prime Minister and Pope - another story where he gets what he wants and finds it doesn't make him happy (though for much of Going Home he really is as happy as we ever see him). He's doggedly optimistic about his and Jaka's future, even as he's plagued by dreams, visions and memories of Rick's advice which make him realise how difficult things might really be. And the grit in the gears - in this book at least - isn't Sim's gender politics, it's something Cerebus has never really touched on: class. Going Home is about a mismatched love affair - a rough-hewn country boy and a posh girl who yearns for freedom. Can he offer her what she needs? Does she really understand what she's getting into? What happens when an older man of letters offers her something more sophisticated?

This is fairly basic romance comic territory - the kind of bare-bones triangular plot you'll see to this day in potboilers or Hallmark movies. And this is what stops Going Home really soaring - while Jaka and Cerebus and even Kennedy feel like realer and more vivid characters than we've seen in the comic for years, the situations they're in are banal. Jaka's choice at the end works as drama because of its resonance with other choices and her history with Cerebus, not as a trite decision between two suitors. But both Jaka's and Cerebus' characters here become a little more stereotypical to make the plots work - Jaka more flippant, Cerebus more pigheaded. Going Home is Sim's best try yet at writing a love story, albeit one which is loading its dice for things to go wrong next time. But even before his declaration of Anti-Feminism in Reads, romance wasn't Sim's strongest suit: you realise that Jaka's Story is so effective partly because he never actually has to bring any of the story's frustrated infatuations to a head before the Cirinists crash into the plot.

Even so, with the possible exception of Minds, this is the best Cerebus has been since Melmoth, a late flowering against multiple odds. Gerhard, finally out of the pub and off the leash, plays more than his part, with a long, slow pan across the post-catastrophe landscape of Iest one of the comic's most beautiful (and oddly moving) sequences ever. He and Sim do a fantastic job on the pages where F. Stop Kennedy sits on the barge in an alcoholic haze, the text of his thoughts breaking and inverting, smearing letters across nighttime landscapes as he drowns himself in gin. After an entire book of noisy drunks, Sim finds a way to use his skill to capture quiet, melancholy drunkenness just as well.

"Is later Cerebus worth reading?" people ask. As a complete body of work... well, we'll see. But I think if you enjoyed Jaka's Story, then yes, Going Home at least is worth reading as a sequel that doesn't quite match its model for impact, but builds well on its mood and ideas. (by Tom Ewing)

[Gilly Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artwork, lettering and pacing of this volume are all excellent. It represents Sim having reached the pinnacle of his own inimitable style so far.

Sadly, the story is only a small improvement on Rick's Story. More certainly does happen. It feels like the final answering of the "will they/won't they" questioning about Jaka and Cerebus' relationship which has been ongoing since Volume One. At the same time, the tension feels lessened and the outcome less important that it had felt previously. This might just be the result of narrative fatigue but, from an artistic standpoint, it does mirror the realities of life as Sim was trying to do.

As with the previous volume I could only suggest this if you are a completist. It was worth, getting off the Cerebus coach a couple of stops back, at the end of Mothers and Daughters. I'm on this ride until we reach the final destination though.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not entirely great but a pretty strong later Cerebus that gets a bit more on track with exploring the characters, where the tangential issues aren't as bad. Not really got anymore to say about this, but I will say this is the point where it clicked for me that Cerebus is really one of the most lucid portrayals of what goes through the mind of an insane person, something that kind of becomes way more prevalent during these latter issues. Things start breaking apart much more, some of it seems intentional whilst a lot of it really doesn't - but the impact is nevertheless there. You'll either find this sort of appreciation with this series during these later sections or you'll just outright hate it, but I'm honestly still fascinated by this series even with a lot of its narrative problems.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think sim really does think women can read minds

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

As Melmoth was a love letter to Oscar Wilde, so Going Home is a pen portrait of F Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda.

[Christian Lipski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is split into two distinct entities, the first being the struggle of Cerebus to get Jaka to his old hometown (and apparently their new home) without running afoul of Jaka's compulsion to never wear the same outfit two days in a row. I will skip this patently bizarre device of Sim's (although it does have faint roots in her dancing costumes at Pud's tavern). In any case, they decide to tour south in order to always be near clothing stores, and then take a boat up the river towards their destination. There are some nice cameos from Alan Moore, Rick Veitch and others.

The second half of the book is the boat trip, which they take with an homage to F Scott Fitzgerald. Like his turn with Oscar Wilde, Sim's devotion to his literary subjects is very deep: The textual passages are well-crafted parodies of Fitzgerald, and references to the author's life and history are there for the scholars to discover. I'm not sure how Jaka survives on the boat without stopping at a clothing store every day, but she seems to perhaps have stumbled upon the concept of buying outfits in advance, as her convenient compulsion doesn't resurface in the rest of the book (nor, I believe, in the rest of the series).

Going Home is a bit split in its personality, being both a chronicle of a faltering relationship and a literary shrine, but it works.

[Sean Samonas · Rating 2 out of 5]

My goodness...actual narrative? Actual, dare I say, plot? Yes! Oh my goodness, actual things happ...oh hey there F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yeah, it is kind of weird seeing you in a Cerebus book. In fact, you kind of bring the story to a screeching halt fast enough to give the reader whiplash.

To his credit, I'll at least say here that this character is forced into the world of Cerebus much more smoothly then Oscar or the next character Ham. But it still is a little confusing and certainly throws off the narrative again. Which is unfortunate because the story of Jaka and Cerebus here is actually kind of interesting again.

I mean, if you can ignore all the subtext and secondary meaning that the author is clearly trying to tie onto their relationship, it is a fairly nice story. Though maybe at this point I was so starved for anything resembling an actual story to read that I was willing to be happy about any plot thrown my way.

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This late volume of Cerebus is light on plot--basically, Cerebus and Jaka travel towards his home village but don't get there. instead it offers an extended critique/pastiche of the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, as F. Stop Kennedy, who writes a novel that transmogrifies the events in Cerebus's life--Sim's fascination with subjectivity and narrative point of view now almost becoming a cliche of the series. Very meta, generally interesting, beautifully drawn. Also pretty much as plotless and meandering as are Cerebus and Jaka themselves, wandering about early in the book and then just rolling down the river later. And Sim's strident nonsense continues to amp up its stridency and nonsensicality in the notes.

[Bill Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of Dave Sim's Cerebus run is a dense read, packed with stunning backgrounds and clever lettering. This one has a slow moving plot covering Cerebus and Jaka's trip to Cerebus homelands. Things are complicated by her being a princess under constant guard and the two of them changing destinations frequently.

I do miss the moments of inspired parody from the early run of the series, but respect his exploration of meta-themes as writers in the story write about their traveling partners. What's not to love about as character named F. Stop Kennedy? It's beautiful cartooning, but a tough read.

[Carlos Nouaille · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dave Sim se lanza aquí a hacer su personal pastiche del estilo de Scott Fitzgerald. ¿Cuál es la relación entre el autor de El Gran Gatsby y el mundo fantástico de Cerebus? Todavía me lo pregunto. Aunque la historia en principio se centra en cómo se marchita lentamente el romance entre Jaka y Cerebus, hay demasiadas florituras y empeños en sacar tramas de donde no hay material y la intención original se queda muy desdibujada. El volumen se salva por el uso osado de la rotulación y porque la ratio entre texto escrito y cómic todavía es asumible.

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cerebus and Jaka travel to his home town in a boat with F. Scott Fitzgerald (?). Once again, Sims gives us some of the most human relationships out of any comic, told with grace and beautiful illustrations. One of the issues in this volume was the first issue of Cerebus I ever read - it has no dialogue, yet it made me cry. That's the sort of story teller Sims is at his best.

[Hazel · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading the end section of chasing Scott it's difficult to remember how the main story went.
This book pulls out of the slump of being more novel than graphic, then being in a bar forever. We finally get back out in Estarcion and the freedom is wonderful. The conversation's between Jaka and Cerebus are for the most part bright and cheerful, and I look forward to the next installment.

[Will · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not believe how boring (and misogynistic) this was. (Of course, *I* am allegedly the narrowindmindrightwingreactionary.)Did Sim get premature senility.

Bolsters my opinion that the series went straight downhill after the "boiling lead" incident.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

The better the art the more troubling the politic. This volume carefully scuttles whatever credit jaka's story may have developed for the character of jaka. Cerebus himself was already beyond hope. And f Scott Fitzgerald shows up to be unhappy and lustful.

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

More bitter misogynist rants, despite Sim's claim that he's not a misogynist, merely an anti-feminist.

[Jennifer]

And after this one, I gave up reading about the warrior ardvark. I am surprised I stuck it out as long as I did.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This when Cerebus REALLY became a chore to read. Sometimes the plotlines meander.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

the better volume of the "going home" storyline by a long shot.

[Ray Cornwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Finished all of Cerebus.

[Robert Hudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, Sims is such a downer on relationships.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

F Scott Fitzgerald for some reason.