Wednesday 21 December 2016

Avoyd Fornication

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.

Another notebook we've only looked at once before is the second to last notebook, notebook #35, in Spore & Konigsberg. That is also what Dave had labeled the notebook which only had 36 pages scanned. In that entry we didn't see the cover. Once again, shocker, it is a Hilroy. It must've been the main type of notebook for sale in Kitchener.

Notebook #35, front cover
Page one has some dialogue and notes for page 1 of issue #275 (aka Latter Days page 184).

Notebook #35, page one
Then on page two there is a thumbnail for that same page. On the finish page it appears as if the majority of artwork was by Gerhard. So it is interesting to me to see Dave's thumbnail and the finished page.

Notebook #35, page two

Latter Days, page 184



2 comments:

Slumbering Agartha said...

Not sure why but the "twitch" floating as its own little moment in the notebook cracked me up. I loved the way Dave used "twitch" to indicate high stress/overwhelm (to great comedic effect) throughout the series. He has since used it in plain text, in the midst of a correspondence here and there. It works every time.

This is kind of tangential, but man oh man does that page 184 from Latter Days look stunning, here.

Unknown said...

Hi Mike - My Dad used to do that. "Doesn't bother ME." and then fake a nervous tick in one eye and cheek.

Or just pretend to have a nervous tick if you were saying something that he thought was ridiculous.

Very funny effect.