(no subject)

Finished Guys and Rick's Story, bringing me to Cerebus #231, where I think I will take alexx_kay's advice and stop.

Both of these contained heavy doses of Dave's paranoid ranting, and even heavier doses of stagnation. I realize that to a certain degree that stagnation was a key point of the story, but sometimes he succeeded in commenting interestingly on it and other times it was just tedious. I think Guys in particular had few redeeming features; it had potential, but, again, didn't really go anywhere. Rick's Story had some pointless parts, but the overall craftsmanship and the art techniques were actually quite interesting, with a kind of flowing humanism that, perhaps unsurprisingly, reminded me of Jaka's Story, though this being the B side of the series it still cast things as a paranoid war of the sexes.

The ending of this section is startlingly conclusive and upbeat... and not very satisfying. The slow percolation through the previous 30 issues of stagnation justifies the ending as not entirely implausible, but it still drops in as an unabashed deus ex machina.

Oh well, that was interesting. Time for something else.