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.
The majority of Melmoth is covered in Dave Sim's notebook #19, which covers Cerebus #141 to 149. We've only looked at it twice, first in Melmoth and Tiny Thumbnails and then in Characters of Melmoth. We've never seen the cover, but no surprise, it is another Hilroy:
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| Notebook #19, front cover |
Here is a sequence you might find familiar:
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| Notebook 19, page 11 |
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| Notebook 19, page 11 |
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| Notebook 19, page 15 |
The scene above happens in Melmoth, pages 51 and 52 (Cerebus #141, pages 3 and 4), but not quite as shown. Dino doesn't flip the coin, just puts it in his pocket. He does hold his hand out for the handshake, but Cerebus in his semi-fugue state, just says 'aye'.
2 comments:
Ya know, strangely enough, Dino was one of my most favorite peripheral characters in Cerebus. Such an honest, straightforward moneygrubber. I think Dave doesn't get near enough credit for how richly fleshed out (and I don't mean in pencil and ink) his secondary characters were.
One of mine was the guy who dusted Missy off, a simple kind gesture, funny but touching too.
A Fake Name
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