Fart Jokes

Cerebus: The Last Day.  By Dave Sim and Gerhard.

I like fart jokes.  I won't deny it.  This particular fart joke is one of the better moments in this book.  In this particular panel, Cerebus is enraged with his son, is planning on killing him and leaps off his bed to do so... but instead falls, farts, breaks his neck and dies.  If that doesn't make you laugh... maybe you don't like fart jokes.

The book was hard to read for me.  The first section is biblical philosophy, an attempt to reframe the language of the bible and make the book of genesis match up with current scientific theories on the beginnings of the universe.  I didn't (couldn't) read it all.  I've read the bible... I've read the Koran... they're boring.  Sim's opening section did nothing to improve my view of them.  Maybe it wasn't supposed to.  I don't know.  Whatever it was trying to do, it didn't work for me.

The conclusion of the Cerebus story was bearable, although still fairly boring.  To Sim's credit, it is a description of an aged politician (Cerebus) in his final day of life - so maybe the fact that it is fairly boring fits.  Basically Cerebus wanders around his bedroom complaining about his aches and pains while trying to reconcile with his son.

For me, the redeeming aspect of the story is that it does cap the whole narrative well.  Here is a character (Cerebus) that was an adventurer, a politician, a pope, a bartender, a sports hero, an emperor and now finally is just old and dying.  Kudos to Sim for drawing such a rich character with a rich life.  For those who were able to stomach (or skip) the biblical commentaries of the previous book, it is certainly easy enough to skip.... uh I mean read... the commentaries in this book so that you can get the satisfaction of completing the story.

The Amazon link is here.