If Jason felt High Society and Church and State were plauged by endless digressions and poor pacing, then he would absolutely hate the second half of Cerebus. As much as I love Cerebus, I don't feel it's really one cohesive story. I don't think it's unfair to judge the series based on only certain storylines. I think it would be unfair to judge one of the major storylines based on only a few issues though.

Just finished Church and State I & II. With the exception of one or two issues in the middle (some pages seemed really badly printed too) and the very end of vol II (like Blade said) it was a real page turner. Definitely worth the money -- especially from DCB.

To see such variety in art style and dialog choices from a single writer/artist over the course of the storyline is really amazing too. Going from full page spreads to tiny frames to upside down dialog it just really blows my mind.

I may go ahead and pick up Jaka's Story in a few months. At least there's a bit of closure at the end of this. I'm glad I ordered vol II of CS before finishing the first one because I just had to open it as soon as I finished the first one.

There's a new interview with Sim over at The Onion AV Club right now. Interesting (and frustrating) reading. In my opinion, he comes off like a complete ***. But what do I know? I'm a "leftist".

jim

Finally got #300 this wekend and threw some thoughts on the end of Cerebus up on my blog if anyone's interested: http://spatulaforum.blogspot.com/