Bloody hell.

News I wasn't expecting to be writing.

Cerebus, the 6000 page satirical epic that represents a high point of the use of the comic book medium to tell stories, that ran for three hundred issues from the seventies into the noughties, the peak of self-publishing success in the comic book form, and that was never going to return – is going to return.

When we last saw Cerebus, old, unmourned and unloved, it was being dragged kicking and screaming into hell.

Now we get to see what happened next. And not in some jokey Cerebus #301 metacommentary.

This is Cerebus In Hell #0. By Dave Sim and friends, out in September from Aardvark-Vanaheim. And to be followed by a new four issue Cerebus In Hell series next year for the character's 30th anniversary.

Oh, and because this is Dave Sim, he's ripping off a painting of hell by Hieronymus Bosch for the cover -and crediting him as well.

Cerebus In Hell #1

(W) Dave Sim (A) Dave Sim & Various (CA) Dave Sim, Hieronymus Bosch

The first new Cerebus comic since 2004! Where has Cerebus been since he died twelve years ago? Is he in hell? Purgatory? Limbo? Some strange 1980 disco with links to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Henry Kissinger? Some ancient Greek disco with links to Plato, Socrates, Aristotle? Some 1990s disco with links to The Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, and Oasis? Is he stuck inside his own Cerebus Online Disco Twitter-feed? Well, wherever he is, he deserves it, so feel free to laugh at his misfortune! This one shot leads into the Cerebus In Hell? 4-issue mini-series in 2017 celebrating Cerebus' 40th-anniversary!

Item Code: JUL161105 Price: $4.00

Here's a sketch Dave Sim drew a while ago that might give you an idea…

And for anyone who wants to get an inkling as to why this is the biggest comic book industry story of the year, catch up with the first thousand pages of Cerebus, for free at Cerebusdownloads.com.

Dave Sim's business partner Sandeep Atwell has registered a Cerebus In Hell blog address…

UPDATE: Comics Beat has discovered that it's to be a college project as Dave Sim is currently unable to draw and will be created with Atwell. They show this example.

According to the interview, The strip will be a four-panel "poor man's Garfield": "Sandeep and I have the same reaction: Cerebus is so hilariously pathetic that the strips pretty much write themselves. Cerebus and the Manticore. Cerebus and the Minotaur. Cerebus and the Unconsecrated Dead. Cerebus and the Suicides. Cerebus and the Ttians. Cerebus and Lucifer. If you can't write four funny panels on that, you're in the wrong line of work."