Wednesday 23 May 2018

A Well Equipped Bar

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.

The last time we looked at Dave Sim's fourth Cerebus notebook was last October in The Deciding Vote. Yes, the notebook covers issues #41 through 44.  Along with the Wuffa Wuffa guy, I found a page on one of the Animated Cerebus stories.

On page 77 of the notebook we see the one page from the notebook for the A Well Equipped Bar:

Notebook 4, page 77
We see the main scene, a listing of what is to happen on each plate, and the one other character in the story other than Cerebus.

Animated Cerebus, plate 1
Animated Cerebus, plate 10
It even looks like on the notebook page was a piece of dialogue - "When are you gonna git a real spitoon barkeep?"

7 comments:

Jeff said...

Maybe one of the nastiest sequences in all of Cerebus, except, maybe, when Jaka was cleaning up after sex with Cerebus, in the carriage, in Latter Daies.

Although, all the dead Cirinist corpses on the plain after Spore went through was a pretty nasty image, too. In a whole other way.

Tony Dunlop said...

DEFINITELY funnier without the dialogue.

Birdsong said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

It's an old joke, but Dave told it well. I've seen an animation of the portfolio on the Web; is that yours, David B.?

-- Damian

Birdsong said...
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Jeff said...

IIRC, the animated portfolio you're speaking of was done by Jeff Tundis, Cerebus ex-patriate extraordinaire.

Damian T. Lloyd, Esq. said...

Aha! Thanks, David and Jeff. And JT, of course! I remember that Bob Fiore reviewed the portfolio in The Comics Journal, and complimented Dave by saying that it was obvious that Dave had been watching his Warner Bros. cartoons as well as listening to them.

-- Damian