"The Sacred Wars Are Over!"

Amazing Heroes Preview Special #4 (Fantagraphics, 1986)
Art by Sergio Aargones, Dave Sim & Gerhard

HEIDI MacDONALD:
(from Amazing Heroes Previews Special #4, Fantagraphics, 1986)

"The Sacred Wars are over," announces Dave Sim. "It's like it's down to the final two combatants. We've eliminated Nazi Germany, but that still leaves the US and USSR, who are Cerebus and Astoria."

Indeed, Book V of Church & State finds Astoria and Cerebus both trying to stake a claim to being the true Messiah. This will involve several issues of long conversations between the two, which Sim predicts will leave fans just as disgruntled as ever.

"This will be the next time that everybody decides I don't know what I'm doing - when I have four or five issues of Astoria and Cerebus talking - but I already know they're really good, so I'm not concerned. I would say, at this point, climatic events are building up towards #100, probably not specifically in #100, probably in #99 or #101, but probably around there."

The book may continue on the somewhat erratic schedule that it's had of late, or it may not. Sim admits to being a bit disheartened at the state of comics these days. "The fanzines and everything are so full of the same crap. It's getting kind of disheartening to go on. It's all this Dark Knight and Superman and revitalised super-heroes and five-issue this and six-issue that. You feel after a while that everything's passed you by. I'm going to keep going, but there's no real impetus to keep to a schedule or anything, because it's largely just this sniping sort of 'we all like to say that we know Dave Sim but  we all like to cut him down' sort of thing. These people want more mutants and funny animal parodies of Frank Miller, so there's certainly enough of those to keep them going. The only thing they can count on is that, five years from now, they'll be reading Cerebus #150, but they're not smart enough to figure that out."

No signs of Cerebus Jam #2 at this point. "I don't push creative people for the sake of reviewers," is Sim's only comment. There are also many interesting projects on tap from Aardvark One International, but expect these to suddenly appear, without warning. Fans are advised to stay alert.