Sunday, November 29, 2009

Tree Planting

Three pages largely concerning a tree planting ceremony, it was hosted by Filgate and the guest ‘planter’ was Henrot Gutch, in recognition of it being ‘Muddah’s Week’ as announced by Filgate. The only characters shown in the first two pages were the former representative of ‘da docks’ and Cerebus’ mother in law. The chapter ended with Filgate making a joke about Henrot’s name sounding like a sneeze with the predictable enraged response from Mrs Gutch.

Although Dave was the master of saying a lot with few words, pictures or pages I question the wisdom of dividing the chapters up this way. The comics were not originally published in this form, because loyal and devoted as Dave’s readers were even they would have had difficulty accepting two or three page issues on a bi monthly schedule. This one is so short that the punchline on the last page is so predictable it's not even funny. The three page joke as an issue was rather pointless as it doesn’t tell the reader anything or advance the story, nor does it provide any foreshadowing. At this point the book seemed to be stuck in a rut with Cerebus locked into a life he didn’t want and neither he or his creator knew how to get him out of it.

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