Thursday 28 June 2018

Not That Rick Nash

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.

So last week we looked once again at Dave Sim's thirteenth notebook, which was mostly used for Cerebus #112 / 113, but also had some other items in it. Like this sketch for the cover to Goddess, Untold Tales of Zolastraya #1:

Notebook #13, page 77
Looks pretty close to the final product, but not quite the same:

Goddess, Untold Tales of Zolastraya #1
Who is this Zolastraya and how did she get Dave Sim to do her cover? Well, it turns out the woman behind the pen name was dating Dave at the time.  In fact, her birthday was a few days ago. And yes, it appears that Dave named Rick Nash after her, well, at least her last name, and not Rick Nash the hockey player. Well, seeing as how Rick Nash was only almost five years old when this comic came out.

Rick Nash the hockey player, not Jaka's husband, actually played for the Boston Bruins last season. I was tempted to get his sweater because you know, Rick Nash! But I'm still holding out for a Fred Hammer sweater instead.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't we get a nice photo of "Z" so that, er, um, we can tell what a good likeness the drawings are?
:)

Culpa

Sean R said...

Pretty sure it's uncredited!

Was always interested if that was ACTUALLY Dave who drew that cover, or just someone doing a REALLY spot-on Dave impression...the main "for" arguments being the snake hatching and head (very similar to the giant snake in the early Cerebus issue) and the hatching in the shadow area of the arm, which could, really, only be Dave, BWS, or someone imitating one of them :) Cool to finally have (mostly) confirmation!

Anonymous said...

She posted a mini-bio here:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HWNQ_BsvYJwJ:www.classreport.org/usa/mi/waterford/wmhs/1982/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Dawn (Celeste) Nash Nash-Weninger

I've been a vegetarian for 17 years. I've been married for 16 years to a great guy. We are avid cyclists. I'm a nationally certified, state licensed massage therapist, specializing in sports and orthopedic. A few years after high school I co-published an independent comic book with a friend, and modeled for Dungeons and Dragons gaming book covers and calenders, painted by the talented Clyde Caldwell. My husband Jim and I moved to the southwest a few years ago, and we've had some fun adventures. We don't have children, mostly because we're kids, ourselves. I still occasionally dye my hair a fun color, and I still like punk rock, (although my musical horizons have expanded hugely).

It appears this is her Pintrest page: https://www.pinterest.com/bicyclesophie/

Here is a business page: https://celesten.ncbcertified.com/services-and-rates

And here is a Myspace page with song mixes: https://myspace.com/celesst/mixes

Too bad she doesn't do comics anymore!

Anyone know which D&D projects she was a part of?

Tony Dunlop said...

"Too bad she doesn't do comics anymore!"

umm...

Mouse Skull Entertainment said...

Tony,

Ha!

That was hilarious.

Matt

Celeste said...

Hi, I'm Celeste. The cover of Goddess included Dave's signature, of course. Preney Print made an error with the cropping of the cover and they cropped Dave's signature off of the cover. Dave was angry with Terry and I, although we had no idea they did it until we picked up our copies of the issue. It was very unfortunate, Preney should have taken full responsibility for the error. Itr was so many years ago now, that its hard to remember how the conversations with Preney went. They were always nice people, though.