Wednesday 1 June 2016

Mind Game III

MARGARET LISS:
A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.

We've looked at Dave Sim's notebook #4 a couple times already, the most recent being in July of 2015 in A Plan for Church & State I. The notebook covers issues #59 to 70, and while the cover stated it had 200 pages, only 160 pages were scanned.

On page 66 we see a thumbnail and some sketches for Cerebus #63, Mind Game III & IV:

Notebook 4, page 66
Doesn't quite look the same as the original does it? On the next page we see some more thumbnails for the Mind Games issue, with one that looks more like the finished mind game III:

Notebook 4, page 67

Cerebus #63, Mind Game III

3 comments:

Eddie said...

I only know this because of SDOAR research, but the symbols next to the giant Cerebus face are from the opening of the Ben Casey TV show: "Man, woman, birth, death, infinity" (it looks like the death and birth symbols are reversed in the first column). I remember mentioning it to Dave after I came across it, and trying to quote the symbols and sequence. He remembered it off the top of his head.

Carson Grubaugh said...

This is great! I just re-read this issue last night and wondering what the combine image would look like. Thank you for solving answering that question, however accidentally.

I have been re-reading Cerebus one a day. Amazing timing.

trail of bread said...

30 years ago I scanned the panels and had this on the kitchen wall...