Cerebus No. 6

Cerebus the Aardvark No. 6
Writer	Dave Sim (story by Sim and Michael Loubert)
Artist	Dave Sim
Published	October/November, 1978
Publisher	Aardvark-Vanaheim
Publication order
Previous	Cerebus No. 5
Next	Cerebus No. 7

Cerebus the Aardvark No. 6 is the sixth issue of Cerebus. It is notable for the first published appearance of Jaka Tavers.

Stories

"The Secret"

Now in Iest, Cerebus comes across a man dying in the street. The man passes along a secret before he expires. Two thieves, E'Lass and Turg, were following the man. E'lass, the brains of the duo, tells Turg to capture Cerebus, who quickly beats him in a fight. E'lass tries diplomacy and offers to take Cerebus to a tavern, an offer the aardvark can't refuse.

In the tavern, Jaka is dancing. Cerebus has no interest in her until E'lass slips three pills into Cerebus's ale to test their efficacy. When E'lass praises Jaka's beauty ("the most beautiful woman east of the Sofim"), Cerebus falls instantly in love. E'lass prepares to worm the secret out of Cerebus but can't pry him away from Jaka. While the aardvark tries to woo the dancer, three Black Sun priests enter the tavern. Assuming they have tracked him down, E'lass tries to grab Cerebus so they can leave. A general brawl ensues.

Switching gears again, E'Lass convinces Jaka to get the secret out of Cerebus. She agrees after E'lass threatens to have Turg end her dancing career. Before she even tries to ask about the secret, though, she tells Cerebus that E'lass frightened her. Cerebus thrashes E'lass and warns him not to do it again.

Back with Jaka, Cerebus decodes the secret. The dying man told him where to find a treasure in a temple; E'lass mentioned the Temple of the Black Sun. He makes plans to get the treasure and start a life with Jaka. Cerebus goes to the market to arrange for supplies. While he picks out a gift for Jaka, however, the pills wear off. He forgets everything and wanders off to find a tavern. E'lass and Turg, meanwhile, think they have located Cerebus in an inn. When they burst into the room, they find the priests instead.

At the tavern Cerebus runs into Jaka, whom he can't recognize. She realizes he was under some kind of spell. She gives him a bottle of apricot brandy, in the hopes that he will one day remember her and return.

Additional

• An untitled editorial by Deni Loubert
• "The Aardvarkian Age" map of Estarcion by Michael Loubert
• "Aardvark Comment"
• "Next: The Return of Elrod"

Characters

• Cerebus (last seen in "Demonhorn", next appearance in issue 7)
• E'Lass (first appearance; next appearance in issue 16)
• Jaka (first appearance; next appearance in issue 36)
• Turg (first appearance; next appearance in issue 16)
• Tchens, Trebu, and Lohi (Black Sun Priests; only appearances)

Objects

• Cerebus' medallions
• Cerebus' sword
• Cerebus' vest
• apricot brandy

Locations

• Iest -- where the issue takes place
• Wall of T'si, Smina, the T'capmin Kingdoms -- places Cerebus promises to take Jaka

Story Notes

• In the "Note from the Publisher" Deni announces that she and Sim will be married before this issue goes on sale.
• In Aardvark Comment, Dave mentions that Michael Loubert helped plot this issue.
• Oath utterance counts: Tarim 3, God 1.
• Letter from Michael Moorcock discussing Elrod is printed in Aardvark Comment.
• (p. 2) Although the treasure is mentioned as gold in this issue by E'lass and also in Dave's comment, Issue 7 establishes it as being uncut diamonds.
• (p. 4) Turg is the second character thus far to think Cerebus resembles a bunny, after Elrod.
• (p. 4) Much like last issue, "excellant" is misspelled.
• (p. 8) Jaka, like Cerebus, doesn't use pronouns when referring to herself. It's later established that this was an act -- she has no such affectation in her next appearance.
• (p. 8) Issue 36 shows that Jaka still remembers Cerebus's promise to kill Jaka a yak for her supper. Unfortunately, it also notes that Cerebus didn't return even after he did remember.
• (p. 9) The priests' names, Tchens, Trebu, and Lohi, are rather simple anagrams of the names Loubert and Hitchens. Loubert obviously refers to Deni Loubert, Sim's fiancée at the time. Hitchens could be either Sarah Hitchens (later creator of the Cerebus stuffed doll) or a relative of hers who was Sim's mistress at the time and the model for Jaka. This whole story was, among other things, a coded message from Dave to Deni, warning her about his romantic instability.
• (p. 14) Cerebus implies that he doesn't have a navel.
• (p. 17) Cerebus, while contemplating life with Jaka, thinks that he "hasn't been this happy since he beheaded his first Borealan." See Issue 157, pages 4-5.
• (p. 19) The pills wearing off on Cerebus bring about the first use of the "Poit" sound effect, which will later be synonymous with teleportation.
• (p. 22) The fate of the bottle of apricot brandy is unknown, but it may the one Cerebus is shown discarding in "Elfguest".
• (p. 22) It is never shown nor said exactly when Cerebus remembers Jaka, just that it is before her next appearance, which is two years later.

Publication Notes

• Reprinted in Cerebus Bi-weekly - February 10, 1989 with a new cover and additional material.
• "The Secret" reprinted in Swords of Cerebus Volume Two and Cerebus.

Dave Sim on Cerebus No. 6

• "So, I felt really guilty after No. 5 started getting reaction and I was in the situation of resolving to do better in the future.

I didn't have the ending in mind until I was a fair bit of the way through the issue. I knew it would go over big. There's no bigger closet sentimentalist in the world than a comic book fan. You have to sneak up on them, but they cry buckets if you catch them off-guard."

"There is one memory of high school that stands out in my mind. Girls. Take a look at the last panel of page six. This is a picture of me in high school (it's also a picture of me in public and senior public school, but we won't go into that). I spent all of high school doing exciting things like this. I would watch a girl in class. I would watch her between classes. I would watch her eat her lunch. I would watch her put her coat on. I would follow her home (darting from bush to bush of course). I would sit across the street and watch her house. I would look up her phone number and memorize it (just in case I felt like dialing the first four numbers and hanging up).

Jaka is the personification of all of those long distance romances. I never indicated to any of these girls that I liked sitting across the street watching their houses. In my heart of hearts, of course, I knew that if I just worked up the courage to talk to them, that they would fall madly in love with me and we would live happily ever after. Of course, I also knew in my heart of hearts that I had actually been born on a distant planet circling a red sun and was rocketed to earth as an infant, only to pass through a cloud of gold Kryptonite which wiped out my superhuman powers. My parents would never own up to it, but I think it was just to keep from hurting my feelings).

I can remember trying to come up with the ending for a few days. I knew that Cerebus would have to snap out of it eventually (I couldn't picture Cerebus fans reading twenty issues of Cerebus sitting across the street from Jaka's house). It was at that point that I realized the essence of the problem. I had been thinking of Cerebus' point of view of the situation, but I hadn't stopped to consider how Jaka was reacting to him.

But you don't want to hear about that, do you?

You don't care about how I came up with the story, or how I came up with the ending. Do you? No!

You want to know when Jaka is coming back. You want to know what she's been doing all this time. You want to know if Cerebus remembers her or not. You want to know in which issue the wedding takes place. You want to know what kind of flowers they're going to have. There are probably a few people out there who bought this book in the hopes that this introduction would reveal the whole ball of wax so you could sleep easier tonight.

You badger me about her in your letters, you hound me unmercifully at conventions. The phone rings in the middle of the night and it's some tormented soul whispering, "When? When?"

Well, let this be a warning to you.

Lay off, or I'll drop her out of a tall building."

• "Musical instruments are something that I've intentionally left out of the Cerebus story-line, although not many people have noticed. A part of it is that comics is a "mute" medium and I like to reflect that. It would be impossible to do Jaka's Story in any other narrative form because you would have to have musicians to accompany the dancing which would spoil the balance of the cast. Part of it is that I despise music unless I'm drunk or stoned. I stopped listening to it while drawing several years ago and I think this has brought a definite improvement to my work. I get a lot of music tapes in the mail, I think because people figure that with all the bands getting mentioned on the letters page that I must be a really big fan of music. Call it wishful thinking; that at some point in the distant past music didn't exist and never evolved. My own personal heaven."

• Philip C: "you skimped somewhat on the non-farcical parts of the plot. E.G., who was that guy bleeding at the beginning (I can make guesses) and why was he so anxious to tell his secret...?"

Dave: "How about this: The guy was a renegade Priest of the Black Sun and realized that someday the Priest [sic] would find the hidden gold and use it for furthering their death-worshipping ways. Giving the word to a complete stranger was preferable to their running across it one day by accident. Fair enough?"

• "Someone took me to task for revising history and claiming that Jaka was not based on Deni. They were going by Deni's Note in Cerebus #6 which stated that the story-line was a wedding present to her. It was, but it was more or less a cautionary tale trying to inform her obliquely (if not opaquely) of strong emotional ties I still felt for the woman Jaka was based on (blank) who became an exotic dancer (read stripper) shortly after Jaka first appeared. The emotions depicted in the drugged Cerebus reflected the feelings I had toward the mistress I had at the time Deni and I got married. Three menacing figures in the story were named, anagrammatically, out of Deni's last name and my mistress' last name (Loubert and Hitchens became Tchens, Trebu and Lohi). I was naive and ridiculous and the poorest imaginable husband material (still am) but my subconscious was at least able to dredge up what I considered a particularly interesting character out of a singularly unstable period of my life. The really interesting thing to me as the creator of Jaka is that even though I can trace her origins from Deni's wedding present to what I felt for Sally to the lingering allure of Lynn, she resembles these three not in the slightest (except for having Lynn's hair). I had a very clear picture of her from the very beginning. I always found her easy and enjoyable to draw."