Here's the second group of questions and Dave's responses to them 
-- an all Jerry Sweet posting! Please send follow-up questions to me 
(jim [o--v--i] at [um.cc.umich.edu]) and I'll pass them along. 
 
                                        *** 
 
Jerry Sweet ([j n s] at [fernwood.mpk.ca.us]) -- Has anyone "seriously" 
optioned Cerebus for an animated series recently? If you would 
still like to see Cerebus done as an animated series someday, how 
much control would you insist on exerting over such a project, say, 
to prevent the perversions we see with typical Hanna-Barbera 
cartoons? 
 
Dave -- Oh, hey, Jer. Whussup? Hey I know you. You hang around 
inside these contraptions, too, do you? Far out. Hey is Arthur C. 
Adams, like, Art Adams? Artie, is that you? Everything is so 
strange in here. 
 
I never really intended to do Cerebus as an animated series. I like 
the look of cels and backgrounds together which is why I did The 
Animated Cerebus, but I am under no illusions as to what sort of 
treatment I could expect to get from television and/or movies with 
a character no one has heard of (We love the whole thing, Dave, 
really we do. The guys in the art department think he should be a 
light purple so he, you know, stands out). Taking option money 
would be inviting the worst of the worst possible end result. 
Besides no one in Hollywood would just buy the film rights, they'd 
want all the vomitus corporate product food rights as well; what 
they called at DC The Big Score (we could do a mini-series like 
you're proposing and you'd make a few dollars and we'd make a 
few dollars, but we think its a better idea to go for the Big Score). 
Creators don't "insist" on anything. You take the money they give 
you and tell everyone how happy you are. No corporation will ever 
pay a creator enough to sue them successfully. 
 
 
Jerry -- Which of your characters, other than Rick, in your opinion, 
is truly the least guileful? 
 
Dave -- The Regency Elf. 
 
 
Jerry -- Is Countess Detin scheduled to show up again in Cerebus's 
life at some point? 
Dave -- No. 
 
 
Jerry -- Is there any direct influence on your work from collected 
folk tales, e.g. the Red, Green, Brown, Pink, etc. Fairy Books? (I 
mention this because much that was magical in these stories was 
simply taken for granted, rarely explained, and sometimes 
completely lacking in logic -- yet didn't destroy the pleasure of the 
stories.) The point of this question is to ask whether there is any 
true structure to the way extra-normal things happen in Estarcion, 
or is magic just intended as a "wildcard", or perhaps just to add 
extra spice to the story? 
 
Dave -- Yes, in a way, to all of that, though probably not the way 
you intended. I think once you become aware of magic, of the 
occult (in its most literal sense "the hidden") you become aware 
that there is a structure to it. Everything falls into patterns and the 
more aware you are, and the more you seek out hidden realms and 
meanings; the synchronistic as opposed to the coincidental, the 
more surprises crop up at unexpected moments and in unsuspected 
ways that  confirms the overall impression of many voices, many 
rooms. Sometimes its quite terrible in a soul-clenching way and 
other times it's like reaching the "payoff" in F.D.'s The Idiot. You 
really feel like you might start laughing  and never stop. I try to 
portray magic as I've found it in day-to-day life and I try to make it 
faithful to the kind of structure/not structure in which I see it 
functioning.  Because it can't be narrowed down to specific 
cause/effect rules (which, when you think about it, makes it what it 
is) it does tend to take on the appearance of a wild card. Does it 
appear at the critical moment when everything is about to change 
anyway, or does everything change because it appears? I thought it 
was quite funny when Neil Gaiman started manufacturing Folk 
Tales. Talk about flirting with hidden forces. Or the last chapter of 
>From Hell with Alan's giant pentagram. Bit odd to be talking about 
these things in the Heart of the Machine. I wonder what the 
Machine will ultimately make of it? Glad I'm just visiting. 
 
 
Jerry -- We see Iest enjoying something like an 18th or 19th 
century level of technology. How much of Estarcion is in fact 
mired in 14th or 15th century standards of living? Do you regret 
giving 14xx dates in Cerebus as a general indication of social and 
technological development, or is it just something we can and 
should discard as unmeaningful? 
 
Dave -- I'm the last person to recommend that anyone discard 
anything as unmeaningful. I only have one point of view about 
Cerebus. I've had a number of people describe their working model 
of what its all about in very effective terms that would certainly 
encompass everything I have com[ing] up ahead, but which in no 
way is what I intended. In the Cerebus chronology, I'm just trying 
to point out that I think we've been up here before many times in 
the past. We are trying to develop a culture at every point that has a 
proper balance of large forces. Right now I think we have too 
much Business, not enough Currency, too much Childbirth, too 
much Religion, not enough Spirituality. In Estarcion, there is too 
much Religion, too much Childbirth, too much Motherhood. The 
overall dating system is not really relevant to my way of thinking. 
Different things come along at different times depending on who's 
advocating them and how appropriate it is. Feminism is 
inappropriate in a world that is eliminating work. Unemployment 
or Machine Success. The right of every woman to have a high- 
paying job in an age when we have half the available jobs we had 
twenty years ago because of mechanization is just silly. One of the 
better Jests from the Upper Chess-boards. I digress. Countries after 
they have been going for about a hundred years come up on the 
Civil War phase of their existence. Canada and the Not The Soviet 
Union are just going through the profound cell-division the Great 
Republic went through eighty years into their (er...your) existence 
(are you all Americans in here? It's so hard to see with all the wires 
and shit). The wealthy areas of Estarcion (Basically Iest, Palnu 
City and Serrea) are many years ahead of their surrounding city- 
states and environments. Tijuana a half hour away from Marina del 
Ray if you think I'm making all this stuff up. 
 
 
Jerry -- The Cirinists seem very repressive indeed. Their recent 
executions in Iest seem reminiscent of ancient Asian styles of mass 
punishment, or perhaps, to make a more modern comparison, of 
Stalinism. Although the Tarimites had an Inquisition, what little we 
saw of them seemed to indicate that they were worrisome to all, 
but not necessarily horrendously bloodthirsty -- perhaps like the 
last gasp of the Catholic Inquisition at the start of the 
Reformation...perhaps. Do you see the Cirinists as more or less 
repressive in general than the Tarimites in that respect? Or are we 
just seeing the "normal" level of excess applied by occupying 
forces or purges seen in the initial stages of coups d'etat? 
 
Dave -- More oppressive. Very much more oppressive. The end 
result of Mothers Unchained. The centerpiece of fascism and 
totalitarianism is Maternal. We have always had a Matriarchy, and 
the centerpiece of its thinking is to make life safe for babies. If you 
call that "thinking". People who are otherwise reasonable adults, 
the moment they drop a litter begin mentally dismantling 
everyone's civil rights with the idea of making the world a 
universal nursery. We see them today most profoundly in the anti- 
smoking forces. Second hand smoke is dangerous so it must be 
wiped out! Life at all costs! Mother Theresa using one of the 
ancient temples of Kali to tend to the sick and the dying; 
BEAMING with happiness when another baby is brought to her. 
I'm sure we will have a very large, very charismatic Mother 
Theresa in the year Three Thousand when the whole world looks 
like India, cheerfully finding a way to keep everyone alive for 
another three years at whatever cost in resources and space. Did 
you know that medical science discovered a way to impregnate 
women who are past child-bearing years? That a seventy year old 
woman can have a baby now? I'm sure Mother Theresa is MOST 
pleased. Not for herself. Just the idea of more babies. I read an 
interview with someone close to the HUAC committee in the 
fifties who said the Senators for the most part, were no better or 
worse than your average politician, but it was their WIVES who 
took to the inquisition like fat little ducks to water. "What about 
that Hollywood producer? He's a red isn't he? Why aren't you 
going after him?" Mothers don't much care what happens to 
mothers Over There, as long as Johnny is fighting to keep her 
hearth and home safe. Salome was not an aberration; just the 
clearest possible manifestation. 
 
 
Jerry -- In Church & State, with the argument between Cerebus 
and Astoria, you twisted the pronunciations of "Tarim" and 
"Terim" away from what we expected, mixing them up in a way 
that seemed intended to play off the animus/anima idea of male in 
female, and female in male. Were the varying representations of 
Church icons -- ankhs vs. "female" symbols -- in Church & State 
also deliberate? Did you consciously mean to convey something, 
or were you just playing with symbols? Were you reading Carl 
Jung's writings before or during your Church & State run? 
 
Dave -- Boy. I really don't know how to answer this one. I haven't 
read any Jung. Clinical examination of the hidden can occasionally 
extract a graveyard chuckle from me, but I can't say that my sense 
of humour is perverse enough to sustain an interest. It's like 
Hawking's Beginning of Time. Skip through for the punch-lines 
and try not to snicker too much. There is Tarim and there is Terim. 
The end of Church & State contained the Judges point of view 
which is only a part of what I'm driving at. Mothers & Daughters 
will develop that a little more thoroughly and then Cerebus will be 
making what he will of what he was told. All I can do is keep 
showing how things look to me and repeating the sequence until 
people get it. Some won't, but that won't stop me from putting it 
down on paper as clearly as I'm able to. If I was able to distill it 
down to a few paragraphs, I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of 
doing the book for the last fourteen years. Male and female is at 
the core of our existence, our disputes and our natures; everything 
that our culture is made up of is derived from those two separate 
and distinct natures. It takes a long time and many pages to address 
what I see when I contemplate those two natures, particularly in 
the face of politically correct rhetoric. 
 
 
Jerry -- Were the references to Jerusalem, the space program, etc. 
at the end of Church & State meant to set up a meaningful link 
between "us" and Cerebus's world -- in the sense of being 
meaningful to the story flow of the entire series? 
 
Dave -- Well, yes. What I'm postulating is that we have, as I 
mentioned before, been up at this height before insofar as 
civilization is concerned. Little enough is known about the global 
picture of four thousand years ago, that it is not difficult to picture 
an entire culture rising up over the course of a couple thousand 
years and then doing themselves in with stupidity or by some 
magical cataclysm or natural disaster.  I see human existence as a 
kind of acne on the face of the blue planet. Sometimes just a few 
spots here and there, sometimes a dramatic flaring. It's usually not 
permanent. The six foot telepathic cockroaches and the redwoods 
having their own distinct cultures doesn't seem too far-fetched to 
me. I think our aversion to cockroaches is the same that the 
President has when regarding the Vice President. No one wants a 
potential successor. With cockroaches it runs even deeper than that 
because they are our inevitable successors. If, several years after 
my death, Bank of Iest currency is discovered in some remote area 
of South America, I will be relishing a post mortem chuckle. 
 
 
Jerry -- Can we expect as much merging, mixing, and playing 
against expectation in Cerebus as we saw in the Illuminatus! 
trilogy? Or has the fun mostly drained out of those references? 
 
Dave -- I probably won't elaborate on the direct Illuminatus 
references, because it is more important, I think, for the people to 
see that we are all mining the same vein; that the Illuminatus 
trilogy created very little, but essentially documented many of the 
Hidden things which are all around us and which have followed us 
since Ancient Egypt and beyond. Alan Moore is definitely putting 
it all under the microscope in "From Hell". When I asked him if he 
ever worried about whether he was propagating a great lie or 
serving some dark force(s) associated with human existence, he 
said he had considered it, but "ultimately, it's a great story, and 
that's all that really matters." Alan has a way of being very 
reassuring on the subject that troubles me deeply. I think he's right 
though. 
 
 
Jerry -- What was your reaction to the comment appearing recently 
in Comics Journal about your occasional descents into 
"melodrama" in Cerebus? (Hey, I *like* the melodramatic 
moments, if that's what you want to call 'em! But what are they to 
you?) 
 
Dave -- I don't remember any reference to that in Comics Journal, 
but then I've always had trouble remembering either praise or 
criticism since neither is, ultimately, of much use in creativity. I 
find it hard to believe that a company that virtually mandates the 
canonization of the Bros. Hernandez would be making use of that 
particular criticism, but then consistency is not a Comics Journal 
virtue. The only reason Sex in the Comics was treated as anything 
but inherently loathsome by Gary's publication was that he himself 
was up to his eyeballs. The Comics Journal is like Einstein's 
curved space, molding itself around Fantagraphics' perceived needs 
and foibles, a series of rationalizations and excuses masquerading 
as a political viewpoint. You could hang it on the wall, but how 
would you ever decide which end is up? 
 
Oddly enough I still get along with Gary, although I think his 
slavish pursuit of market share is going to do him in before he 
realizes there's a problem. 
 
                                            *** 
 
A reminder about upcoming tour dates: 
 
  April 12 
  Denver, Holiday Inn -- I-70 at Chambers Road (Time Warp in 
Boulder on April 11) 
 
  April 26 
  Chicago, Hyatt Regency -- Woodfield Road, Schaumburg 
(MoondogUs in Mt. Prospect on April 24, MoondogUs in Lincoln 
Park on April 25) 
 
  May 3 
  Miami, Park Plaza Hotel -- Palmetto Expressway & NW 103rd St. 
 
  May 31 
  Kansas City, Marriott -- Metcalf Ave. in Overland Park 
 
Again, send your new questions to me and I'll pass them along. I'd 
also appreciate any comments you have on how to do this better. I 
apologize for the word-wrap problems with "Dave's responses... 
(I)" I think I have things under control now.
 
jimO