Mothers and Daughters (comics)

Mothers & Daughters
Cover to Cerebus #155, the fifth issue of the Mothers & Daughters storyline
Number of issues	151–200
Series	Cerebus
Publisher	Aardvark-Vanaheim
Creative team
Creators	Dave Sim Gerhard
Original publication
Published in	Cerebus
Issues	151–200
Language	English
Chronology
Preceded by	Melmoth
Followed by	Guys

Mothers & Daughters: a novel is the sixth novel in Canadian cartoonist Dave Sim's Cerebus comic book series. Sim considers the novel to be the final portion of the main story. It collects Cerebus #151–200 in four volumes, the seventh through tenth volumes of the paperback "phone book" collections of the series, titled Flight, Women, Reads and Minds.

After two quiet, character-focused novels (Jaka's Story and Melmoth) in which the character Cerebus took a supporting rôle, Cerebus springs into action and takes centre stage in the series again. The novel is filled with climactic happenings, including the revelation of the identity of Suenteus Po, a sword battle between Cirin and Cerebus, and Cerebus having a long conversation with his creator—Sim himself.

Of particular note are the text portions that made up a large part of the third book of the novel, Reads, and especially what was the last issue making up that book—issue #186, in which Sim speaks to the reader in the first person about his ideas on gender. His writing in that issue about the "Male Light" and the "Female Void" have earned Sim a reputation as a misogynist and lost him numerous readers.

Cerebus, who had twice been Prime Minister of the city-state of Iest (first in High Society) and then all-powerful Pope, had fallen from grace at the end of Church & State. The fascist, matriarchal Cirinists invaded Iest, and Cerebus went into hiding, first with Jaka (the love of his life) and her husband.

After Jaka is captured by the Cirinists for illegal exotic dancing, Cerebus believes she has been put to death. He takes Jaka's doll, Missy, with him and finds a café at which to spend the rest of his life, paying for it with a rare gold coin, whose value has become as the Cirinists have collected all the gold in the city.