Crossing Over Part Two

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.

We've already looked at a couple pages of Dave Sim's 21st notebook which contains pieces of his work on Spawn #10 back in October of 2014 in Crossing Over. The notebook had 260 pages scanned and was used not only for Cerebus #164 through 187, but for Spawn #10.

We've seen pages 25 and 26 which contained some dialogue. The next page also contains dialogue, but for a different part of the issue.

Notebook #21, page 27

The crossed out text on the far left says "It's a great house. . .satellite TV receptions great. . .should be able to get four different hockey games on a good night." For those of us into hockey, there is more hockey talk in the bottom right corner. Talking about the Leafs of course - Toronto's NHL team - how they have a home and home series against the Red Wings on the weekend (play in Toronto one night, Detriot the following night), and how Gilmour, a Toronto player - Doug Gilmour played forward for Toronto from 1991 to 1997, right during the writing of Spawn #10. Fuhr was their goalie (Grant Fuhr) and Clark was another forward (Wendel Clark).

The page also has a funny Cerebus line: "Babies all look like Winston Churchill to Cerebus."

The next page has some dialogue between Spawn and his wife. And what appears to be a sketch of the hands reaching through the jail cell bars.

Notebook #21, page 28