Cerebus No. 20

Cerebus the Aardvark No. 20
Writer	Dave Sim
Artist	Dave Sim
Published	September, 1980
Publisher	Aardvark-Vanaheim
Publication order
Previous	Cerebus No. 19
Next	Cerebus No. 21

Cerebus the Aardvark No. 20 is an issue of Cerebus published by Aardvark-Vanaheim.

Stories

"Mind Game"

Cerebus has been drugged by Perce, who turns out to be in the Inner Circle of the Cirinists. When he regains consciousness, Cerebus finds himself in a dark area, although he can hear and speak to Perce and her accomplice, Mother Wenda. According to them, they have sent him to the Seventh Sphere for a revelation, and if he fails to provide an acceptable one within an hour, they must kill him.

Cerebus wanders into a gray area, where he finds he can communicate with someone calling himself Suenteus Po, the founder of Illusionism. Po, who has access to several tomes, provides a likely revelation: "The rebirth is at hand." The Cirinists are delighted; they will take Cerebus to a convent and keep him in this trance for the rest of his life.

Thinking quickly, Cerebus tells Po that the Cirinists are plotting against the Illusionists. He then tells Wenda that the Illusionists are plotting against the Cirinists. He orchestrates a clash between the two groups at a cloth store across the street from Perce's parlor, perhaps hoping that he can escape in the confusion. Before Wenda leaves, though, she gives Cerebus a sleeping potion, and he falls back into unconsciousness.

Additional

• "A Note from the Publisher" by Deni Loubert
• "The Aardvarkian Age" by Michael Loubert
• "Aardvark Comment"

Characters

• Cerebus (last seen in issue 19; next appearance in "What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One")
• Suenteus Po (first appearance; next appearance in issue 28)
• Perce (last seen in issue 19; final appearance)
• Mother Wenda, (only appearance)

Locations

• Seventh Sphere
• Togith - mentioned

Story Notes

• This issue is sometimes referred to as "Mind Game I," for the obvious reason that later issues in the "Mind Game" series are also numbered.
• Throughout the issue, the word/thought balloons with the double borders (in the gray areas) belong to Suenteus Po, while the spiked balloons (in the dark areas) belong to Wenda and Perce.
• If you take the characters at face value, it seems like Suenteus Po is a rather lackadaisical and gullible leader of the Illusionists, while the Cirinists are also rather gullible and easily manipulated. Perhaps that's how they were originally intended; however, later descriptions would show otherwise.
  • One possibility is that neither group took Cerebus very seriously at this stage. Another is that these "conspirators" are amateurs (at conspiracies, anyway), in the lower echelons of these groups, unlike the committed and powerful members he would meet later.
• (page 1) The attribution for the first opening quote, from Cirin's book The New Matriarchy, is the first mention of her name. An inspirational passage, part of it reads, "It is our goal not only to find our own illumination, but to give illumination to others." The other quote is from Innec Starym's My Months as Palnu's Grandlord and describes a ritual sacrifice.
• (page 5) Wenda says, "A novitiate must discover the sacred word inside of an hour or his life is forfeit." If she means Cerebus, then it is possible to be a male Cirinist novitiate.
• (page 12) Po says, "Have you any idea how hard it is to find blond hash on a gold carpet?" This is very out of line with Po's later characterization of himself as an ascetic (Issue 160, page 10) (Alexx))
  • which suggests that the Po is this issue is a different person.
• There's a special trick to the art work in this issue, which Dave freely explains in his Swords of Cerebus introduction -- the pages, when arranged in standard order, form a large image. For this reason the biweekly reprint of this issue did not have any staples.

Publication Notes

• Reprinted in Cerebus Bi-weekly - August 25, 1989 with a new cover and additional material.
• "Mind Game" reprinted in Swords of Cerebus Volume Five and Cerebus.

Dave Sim on Cerebus No. 20

• "This was actually the issue when I first came up with the idea for issue 20 -- you can see it on pages three through six and pages eight and nine. When I finished drawing the curve on page three, I had this picture in my head of the hallucination panels sort of swirling through the whole book around all these ninety degree angle panels. By the time I was done page six, I was thinking of extending the idea for several issues, gradually having more and more of the swirling panels until the rest of the story was over-powered by them and I could do a whole issue of nothing but swirling black panels with cross-hatching patterns.

"I chickened out of course. I was pretty daring by this point, but not that daring. I did a couple of more swirling panels (this time incorporating the real background in the swirling) and then brought the Earth-pig back to consciousness with nary a backward glance of regret and proceeded to try something that would eventually emerge as the form of No. 20: Talking Heads.

"I was making progress, but it was another twelve issues before I let the solid black and cross-hatching swirl away the ninety degree angle panels."

• "Anyway, Cerebus' mental acrobatics seemed like the best way to kick off the endless complications and intrigues to come. The Illusionists versus the Cirinists in Togith. Pictures within pictures illustrating the stories within the story."