Cerebus: Book Three

Yes, I'm a glutton for punishment. By the time my post on High Society was written and posted, I was 1/3 of the way into Church & State, Volume 1. At this point, I'm finished with that book, and halfway into Church & State 2.

So anyways....where did we leave off?

Ah yes. As Sim notes in the introduction to Volume 3, the original intent after High Society was to focus on shorter, standalone stories. It was only after the first few issues that he realized he was getting himself into something much more formidable. As such, the Church & State Volume One collection is divided into three sections. the first section is mainly comprised of a short, seemingly standalone story featuring Cerebus and a new character, Countess Michelle. But Cerebus' apparent rival and prime manipulator, Adam Weisshaupt, quickly enters the picture, with the Cockroach (ahem, Wolverroach!) in tow. And whenever Weisshaupt shows up, manipulation and political drama follow.

Soon, we are back hip-deep in the politics of Estarcion, where Weisshaupt has finally succeeded in striking an accord between various factions, and Cerebus is back in the routine of Prime Minister. Blackmailed into assuming this position, actually. By Weisshaupt, who has drugged Cerebus, married him off to Red Sophia, and revealed that, as President, he has the sole power to dissolve a marriage. And of course, desertion is punishable by execution.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but there's one aspect of Church & State that I found really intriguing, and hadn't noticed before. For a book that's ostensibly examining Belief and Faith and their effects on Power, and vice versa (to paraphrase the introduction), we don't actually get into any sort of discussion of Faith or Belief or Theology until halfway into Volume 2. Essentially, Church & State is more a continuation of the themes of High Society: power and manipulation on a grand scale. Religion here is presented solely as a tool towards these ends, and faith is displayed only by characters who are on the receiving end of that manipulation, with the exception, perhaps, of Bran Mac Mufin (and I always wondered if Sim regretted naming the character that back in the early days...). Cerebus as Prime Minister and Cerebus as Pope differ only in the sheer level of control to be asserted over the willing followers. In High Society, control was acheived through deal-making, back-stabbing, alliance-forming and -breaking. In Church & State, political power is wielded by the Church works in much the same way, until Cerebus decides to take advantage of his perceived "infallibility" as Pope and bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.

The main characters are uniformly of the ruling classes at this point. Lords, Dukes, Bishops, and the sort surround Cerebus and form the core of the unfolding drama. But of all these characters, even the most apparently faithful, like Bishop Powers, wield the masses' belief in their church as a weapon, a tool to broker deals and exert political power. The power struggle between the Eastern and Western churches is more about economic and political strength than it is about matters of doctrine and belief. It's the belief of the lower classes in the city of Iest and it's surroundings that give the church it's power. As long as the church has a grip on the faithful, it has a foothold in the political structure of the city-state. Religion as not only opiate of the masses, but also as the sword of the church.

Now, this gets complicated once Cerebus is appointed as the Pope of the Western Church, in yet another Machiavellian move by Bishop Powers intended to limit President Weisshaupt's influence. Bucking his expected role as a tool of the Eastern Church, Cerebus instead holes up in a hotel halfway between the upper and lower cities, surrounds himself with guards, and announces that Tarim will destroy the world in 10 days unless he receives every single piece of gold in the city. Suddenly, those used to using their faithful as a weapon find themselves on the receiving end of the weapon, which is being used for a particularly psychotic and monomaniacal purpose, with no regard for the possible consequences....

On a formal level, the narrative is structured more loosely than High Society was, with plenty of diversions and sidelines from the main story. There are several dream sequences and comic interludes as well. Whereas High Society built alot of humour into the situation itself, the first stretch of Church & State throws in a lot of funny asides and sight gags that don't relate directly to the storyline (Mrs. Tynsdale's two appearances, for example, are solely sight gags, and could easily be left out of the book without consequence). Not to say that they're completely disposable, but they don't drive the plot forward in the way that almost any given scene in High Society did.

And of course, we have more of Jaka. There's a pattern emerging in her appearances at this point. She arrives to provide a counterpoint to the other characters, to give Cerebus another option. But this time, having refused her twice, he perhaps realizes his mistake, and has his bodyguard, Bear (and boy, does this name become rife with subtext in Guys, a few years later!), bring her to him in the commandeered hotel. Red Sophia has left him, and he's sick of his own power and the continued attempts by those surrounding him to exert their influence.

But he's missed his chance now...he offers to give it all up, take her away to the mountains where the two of them can live away from everything; only to find out she's married. And pregnant.

The other pattern in Jaka's few appearances so far is violence. She's already been slapped by Cerebus once, the second time she shows up in High Society, and this time, she's forced to her knees, to Cerebus' eye-level as he tried to intimidate her into going along with him. These are difficult scenes, for obvious reasons, but moreso in hindsight. At the time, in a purely textual sense, the actions are perfectly in character for Cerebus, a barbarian with a short temper. But there's a particularly ugly example of this sort of in-character action coming up in the next book, that becomes even more difficult when you know a bit about the author and other people involved. But more on that in the next book's post.

We're reaching the end of the book, and there's still so much plot here....and this is only half of the story! We have Adam Weisshaupt's heart attack as he makes his final attempt to wrest away Cerebus' gold and power, followed by an apparent deathbed epiphany that seems to cast his actions in a glow of inevitable failure. We have Bran Mac Mufin's loss of faith in Cerebus, and his subsequent suicide as the walls of Cerebus' papacy literally fall down around him. There are repeated warnings, of an apparently mystical nature, to Cerebus, suggesting that he's embarked on a dangerous, even blasphemous course. But we don't see exactly how dangerous until the next book...