Jaka's Story (comics)

Jaka's Story
Cover to the Jaka's Story collection (Aardvark-Vanaheim, 1990)
Date	1990
Series	Cerebus
Page count	486 pages
Publisher	Aardvark-Vanaheim
Creative team
Writer	Dave Sim
Artists	Dave Sim Gerhard
Original publication
Issues	114–136, 138
Chronology
Preceded by	Church & State
Followed by	Melmoth

Jaka's Story is the fourth major storyline in Canadian cartoonist Dave Sim's Cerebus comics series.

Originally published in Cerebus #114-136, the storyline continues in the wake of the events of "Church and State" and the conquest of the city of Iest by the fascist matriarchal Cirinists. The story focuses on Cerebus, his longtime love interest Jaka, Jaka's husband Rick, Oscar (a stand-in for the real life Oscar Wilde), and Jaka's employer Pud (a tavern owner who employs Jaka) as they struggle against the repressive fascist regime of the Cirinists. In particular, the free spirited Jaka defies the Cirinist ban on dancing, which leads to ruin for Rick, Jaka, and Cerebus.

The book flashes back and forth between Jaka's lonely, aristocratic childhood up to her twelfth birthday, and the "present" time of the main Cerebus storyline. The "present" sections are told in comics form while the "past" portions are told in flowery prose sections, which the reader finds out later are written by Oscar (and are in Sim's imitation of Wilde's writing style), unknown to Jaka and based on what Oscar has heard from Rick.