Astoria! GO AWAY!

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.

Just last week we looked at Dave Sim's 10th notebook which he used in the creation of Cerebus. Looking through it I found some more thumbnails. This time it was of issue #88 pages 8 and 9, or pages 742 and 743 if you're following along in the Church & State II phonebook:

Notebook #10, page 20

The page in the notebook is interesting to contrast with the finish pages - not to see how the panel layout and text differs (not much), but to see Gerhard's background:

Church & State II, pages 742 & 743

The final panel in page 8 is the most noticeably different when Gerhard works his magic:

Comparison between notebook and final panel

Astoria, the word balloons and the footprints in front of her are all pretty much the same - we can even see the white fur trim on Astoria's coat - but all that rich detail from Gerhard brings the panel to life.