Comic Book Review of Cerebus the Aardvark Issue 13

Cerebus finds himself broke, not for lack of trying, and unaware of what is really going on. All he wants is enough gold to pay for his ale and play dimondback, but as fate has it no matter how hard he tries he always gets the royal screw job. It's never usually his fault, but that of some parody of traditional sword and sorcery. The genera is usually filled with the same characters and plots of it's easy for Dave Sim to poke fun.

The comic is revolutionary for it's take with its free flowing panel structure that really lets the visuals tell the story. The narrative captions that quickly bring you into the world of Cerebus without any lack or holes in the plot. Plus just the general idea that humor can be found in anything even in a world of black magic and steel.

Issue Thirteen starts with our hero down and out after loosing gold or nearly having gold in the last few issues. He trying to plan his next more, but really being in Lower Felda seems just about as low as you can get. Then a bird poops on him.

Local villages stumble upon him and assume him to be the work of an evil magician Necross the Mad. The local holy mad is of course insincere and uses the religion and the presence of Necross the Mad to control the dim witted villages. Sending one of the farmers into Necross' castle with Cerebus he pretend to perform a ritual.

When the farmer doesn't return the priest runs back to the village for additional help. Inside the castle the booming voice of Necross fills the room and demands answers to his questions of, 'Are you evil?" The farmer breaks down and confesses all of his silly sins then is smote. Cerebus asks to meet Necross face to face in a cloud of smoke he appears-coughing badly. His name stands true to form he is really mad, but in his defense he has carved a huge stone golem.

When asked what he's going to do with it he has no idea. He also is in no way responsible for the problems of Lower Felda because he's to busy trying to destroy the universe.

"The whole universe? Isn't that rather drastic?" asks Cerebus.

Necross responds with, " I prefer to think of it as suicide on a somewhat grander scale."

Necross is then alerted to the presence of the priest right before he is struck in the chest with an arrow. Instead of dying he posses the statue on accident. The attacking villages are then crushed by him while Cerebus leaves grumbling to himself about how much he hates Lower Felda. After the attack to quote a village, "Say-it's awfully gory in here."

The priest and Necross finally have their finally battle in which the priest tries to use his golden holy artifact only to have it knocked out the window. Necross is then trapped in the castle because of his bulk he has now way down. The golden artifact which fell out of the window lands in the hands of Cerebus who finally got something out of this entire ordeal.

The comic is a standard classic in its own right and has been collected since the late eighties. If you don't read comics then you might feel like your missing something. For the average comic reader or the fantasy enthusiasts it's a good bet you will enjoy Cerebus.