Something falling (Perfect panel #10)

Cerebus #97
The panel where things start to really get weird
By Dave Sim

Forget all the weird sex, intense religion and insane politics that ultimately overcame Dave Sim’s Cerebus, and the comic is often remembered for its solid cartooning, or as an exercise in sheer determination, or as a faintly humourous diatribe against the comic book industry.

But this is the moment where it becomes something stranger.

At the very end of the penultimate act of Church and State, Cerebus the Aardvark hears something fall, and it triggers something. It’s a signifier of change, and it always quickly wipes out the established status quo and heads somewhere transcendent.

The best thing about it is that I still don’t know what it all means. It might been an echo of his own death – Cerebus is, in his last moment alive, the something that falls – and it might be an echo of the past, but it’s one of those perfectly weird moments that doesn’t necessarily makes sense, but feels perfect.