The Albatross

Cerebus #45 (January 1983)
Art by Dave Sim 
(Click image to enlarge)

DAVE SIM:
(from Cerebuswiki)

[The Albatross] is the most formidable power object in the known universe: a wildly improbable plot device. Like The Maltese Falcon only more politically formidable. In a Real World context, I called my notebooks my Albatrosses because I was as saddled with them much like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. So I was declaring in a way -- by making the albatross statue that significant in High Society -- that I was ambitious enough to want to do something of remarkable significance with all the half-witted notions and half-baked philosophies I was sketching out and jotting down in my own "albatrosses". "Invoke often", is the first rule of the sort of mysticism that one finds in used paperbacks in 5 for a dollar bins. Unless one is in a New Age bookstore, in which case one can pay 50 dollars to be told the same thing between hemp-derived hard covers.

Cerebus #90 (September 1986)
Art by Dave Sim & Gerhard