Cerebus #16: Party poopers

I’ve read this one a couple of times now and, despite the amusement Lord Julius always provides, I’m just not impressed by this issue.

Julius throws his Festival of the Petunias in the Pits despite Cerebus’ worries about security. The aardvark’s instincts prove right as he soon discerns several armed guests advancing on him and Lord Julius. Quickly realizing that standard tactics will be useless, Cerebus tricks the guests — the foppish, ineffectual sort of aristocrats that will be subject of much lampooning throughout the series— into pelting “the ones carrying the swords” with herring-and-onion dip.

As the assassins are thrown into confusion by this, Cerebus and Julius follow the rebel leader through a secret door and eventually catch up with him. As the rebel leader taunts them, Cerebus realizes just how sick he is of all this nonsense and he tells Lord Julius that he will fight this battle for eight bags of gold and a horse so that he can leave the city. Julius agrees and as the rebel reveals himself — it was one of Julius’ employees — Cerebus is easily able to kill him. The rebel leader that is, not Lord Julius.

Meanwhile, E’lass (from issue #6) is also at the party with the intention of stealing a large diamond from one of the guests. He manages this easily enough — the owner of the diamond having fainted after being insulted by Cerebus — but is immediately gripped by fear. He notices the secret door and manages to slip through it unnoticed by anyone. As Cerebus and Julius pursue the rebel leader, E’lass assumes that they are chasing him and flees further down the passage. He eventually flings the diamond into a deep pit just before Cerebus and Julius reach him and E’lass discovers that they weren’t after him at all. The E'lass subplot, while mildly amusing, does nothing to enhance the plot and, frankly, feels more like filler than anything else.

As Cerebus rides out of town in the last panel, Lord Julius receives a letter apologizing for missing the festival. It also mentions that Julius’ “kitchen staff supervisor” sounds a lot like a friend she met a year ago named Cerebus. It is signed, “your niece, Jaka.” (I had thought that this revelation came later in the series.) Julius calls out to Cerebus, but it is too late.

I don’t really know if it means anything or not, but one commenter on this blog mentioned that Dave Sim doesn’t believe in coincidence so I thought I would mention that Jaka appeared in issue #6 along with E’lass.

The ending is, I think, meant to be ironic or bittersweet, but I’m not sure it succeeds. The problem is that, as far as we know, Cerebus just won’t care. And we really don’t know Jaka well enough yet for her reactions to mean that much to us either. We will, of course, get to know Jaka a lot better over the course of the series and from the point of view of someone who has read a good deal of the series already, I did feel a certain sadness at her letter. But I just don’t think that emotional jolt is really there for someone who has only read the series from the beginning to this issue.