Cerebus No. 91

Cerebus No. 91
Church & State 41
Writer	Dave Sim
Artist	Dave Sim Gerhard
Published	October, 1986
Publisher	Aardvark-Vanaheim
Publication order
Previous	Cerebus No. 90
Next	Cerebus No. 92

Cerebus No. 91 is an issue of Cerebus published by Aardvark-Vanaheim.

Stories

"Talking to Tarim"

While immobile on the regular plane of existence, Cerebus has a discussion with a Big Round Glowing White Strange Thing about the Tower and the Ascension. Cerebus decides to make the ascension. The strange light "returns" Cerebus back in time to meet Lord Julius Tavers, Boobah, and Archbishop Powers.

"The Applicant"

by Dave Sim and Colleen Doran

Cerebus observes a young woman's indignant reaction to a "job interview".

Additional

• "Note from the President" by Dave Sim
• "Aardvark Comment"

Characters

• Big Round Glowing White Strange Thing (last seen in Cerebus No. 90; next appearance in Cerebus No. 111)
• Cerebus (last seen in Cerebus No. 90; next appearance in Cerebus No. 92)
• Archbishop Powers (last seen in Cerebus No. 90; next appearance in Cerebus No. 92)
• Boobah (last seen in Cerebus No. 90; next appearance in Cerebus No. 92)
• Lord Julius Tavers (last seen in Cerebus No. 90; next appearance in Cerebus No. 92)
• Red Sophia (cameo)

Locations

• Iest

Publication Notes

• "Talking to Tarim" reprinted in the Church & State II phonebook

Dave Sim on Cerebus No. 91]]

• 07/05: (WILDCARD): So is that Tarim that Cerebus is Talking to? Why does he look like a big round glowing sphere? Is he linked to Po?

DAVE: Well, they’re all linked in the sense that they’ve gotten immersed in this ascension business “by whatever means necessary” so there’s a lot of residual “means” just lying around in residual physical and spiritual forms. The different elements, the gold sphere and the tower and what-not have just become elements of the equation. Note that the “Tarim” Cerebus is talking to has no idea what is actually “up there” apart from heaven or what it is that you’re going to do when you get there but he (actually he/she/it) has an encyclopedic knowledge of how to get there, what to avoid, what works what doesn’t work. It’s just obsessive-compulsive behaviour, like a video game. Putting in hundreds of hours figuring out how to get past all of the obstacles at each different level of the game and…then what? The question has no resonance for the obsessive-compulsive. Then what what? With their entire attention glued to the television screen. Spriz, spriz, spriz, fraz, fraz, fraz, glomp, glomp. You know, the investment of hundreds of hours of your life that you’ll never get back? What about it? Spriz, spriz, spriz, fraz, fraz, fraz, glomp, glomp.

I assume that there’s a lot of that in the realm of spirit. That the “Tarim” Cerebus was talking to was a magician of some kind who had found a way to encode himself into the gold coins so that they would function as a kind of tape recorder so he would be able to remind himself of how to work his way through the various levels of the video game when he incarnated in the future (rather than just passing on to the next level of existence which is what all video games are degraded versions of, from what I can see). From the standpoint of the free-floating awareness, Cerebus was him, he had just forgotten that he was him which is why he encoded himself into the gold coins and he knew enough not to tell him that he was him because he knew that when you incarnate you like to think of yourself as an individual and not just the latest version of someone else and that it’s better not to get into the discussion in the first place because all you want to do is post the necessary video game reminders—i.e. get to the top of the tower while you have time.

He looks like a big round glowing white strange thing because that was the easiest way to communicate with Cerebus. Cerebus wanted an answer to what the big round glowing white strange thing was so that was an ideal form to adopt in the realm of spirit, the ideal mental image, if you wanted Cerebus to listen to what you were saying and retain the message you had to impart to him. Get to the top of the tower. Cerebus managed to retain it through all of the strange events of issues 92 through 101. He saw the gold sphere and made the break for it. Get to the top of the tower.