Jaka's Story

Blurb

Jaka's Story is the fourth major storyline in Canadian cartoonist Dave Sim's Cerebus comics series.
There is danger in the air, as the fascist matriarchal Cirinists have conquered the city of Iest. Cerebus hides from them halfway between the Upper and Lower cities in the mountainside home of Jaka, the woman he's in love with, and her husband, Rick. Jaka works illegally as an exotic dancer in a tavern with no clients while Pud, the tavern owner, secretly lusts for her, revealed using interior monologue. A caricature of Oscar Wilde is their neighbour and friend of Rick, much to the chagrin of Jaka and Pud, who dislike him. Cerebus himself stays largely in the background, and is almost entirely absent from the second half of the book, as the story focuses mainly on development of the characters Jaka, Rick, Pud and Oscar.
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.