Bran Mak Mufin

Cerebus #4 (June/July 1978)
Art by Dave Sim

DAVE SIM: 
(from Swords Of Cerebus Vol 2, 1981)

This story only has one joke, Cerebus' fur smells bad when it gets wet. Why, you might rightly ask, is this the only joke in the whole issue (barring the phonetic Pigtish pun names)? 

Well.

By the time I was finished drawing issue No 4, I was very happy with what was happening with Cerebus. Issue No 4 had humour, panache, charisma, style, wit, grace, charm, radiance, subtlety, balance, depth, richness. Contrast this attitude (my view of No 4 while I was trying to think up something to do in issue No 5) with the one in paragraph five of my introduction to Cerebus No 4 (in the last volume of SWORDS -- being my view of issue No 4 when it was drawn but not yet printed). You see why I'm crazy? Same story, but one minute it's garbage and the next it's a masterpiece. This was very pronounced between issues No 4 and 5. I was starting to get a grasp of the kind of material I thought Cerebus fans were looking for (there even WERE a few Cerebus fans by the time the fourth issue came out), but I was trying to get an idea of how to do a little less and still get away with it, so this issue was to be a lesson to myself; Dave Sim's First Annual Symposium on How to Fudge Twenty-two Pages and Get Away With It...