CEREBUS continues to be the best damned comic book on the stands. Year after year, issue after issue, story after story, Dave Sim continues to deliver. No fights, no punching, no trash talking, only the occasional scantily clad female. Hell, sometimes he even does it WITHOUT pictures. Sometimes he does it with ONLY pictures. It's the best comic there is. You miss this, you are missing the seminal comic of our time, and you'll be sorry. Dave has made it easy enough to get the back issues and catch up (no, you won't understand at this point unless you read the back issues). It's sure easier (and cheaper) to get the whole story than just about any other comic book series I know of. The whole story is collected in a series of affordable paperback "phonebooks" and are available in most comics stores or directly from Aardvark/Vanaheim. Price per volume ranges from $15 to $30.

This particular issue is a continuation of Sim's exploration of the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, as the thinly-disguised F. Stop Kennedy. It is similar to his earlier musings on Oscar Wilde, though not so dark. Sim of course uses this as a platform to continue to pick apart the nature of relationships between men and women, between artists and the powers that be. Meanwhile, the plot creeps forward like the slow boat the characters are traveling on. Cerebus himself has become little more than a plot device in his own book.

CEREBUS can be a million things you may hate. It is a flawed work. But for all its pockmarks, it is still vibrant and living, and always interesting. Dave Sim is a true comic book artist, and books like CEREBUS are the best hope for the future.