When he does finally explode into violent action, in the epilogue, it almost takes one’s breath away, and it’s as if the last 230 pages have existed merely to lull the reader into a false sense of security. In that novel there were strong hints that there were two Oscars, and the deliberate ambiguity is continued here.Ĭerebus, who doesn’t even appear until page 52, spends most of the book in a near-catatonic state, sitting outside the same tavern where we first saw the Roach. Although it may not even be the same Oscar that we met in Jaka’s Story, the previous book. These don’t intrude upon the main story, which depicts the decline and eventual death of Oscar Wilde, through the eyes, and letters, of his close friends. The first words he speaks are, “Fucking cunts!” Artemis disappears after the prologue, and his brief appearance, little more than a cameo, would be repeated by other characters from earlier books. The book opens, after some beautiful establishing shots by Gerhard, with Artemis Strong (AKA the Roach) sitting outside a bar. This explains why Sim, in his introduction, calls the 248 page Melmoth a short story. Sim, and the ‘Cerebus effect’ (buying books rather than each issue of a comic) contributed immensely in popularising the graphic novel format, and up to this point Cerebus ‘phonebooks’ (with the exception of the first, a collection of short stories) had been large novels: High Society and Jaka’s Story are around 500 pages each, and Church and State ran to 1,200 pages.
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