Thursday 21 February 2019

Dang Snowy Storm

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.

Last week in Swooncommamortals we saw a couple pages from Dave Sim's 21st Cerebus notebook, which covers Cerebus #164 through 187 and had 260 pages scanned.

On page 78 we see a rough layout for page 133 of the phonebook, Women, or page 7 from Cerebus #169 if you're following along in the single issues.

Notebook 21, page 78
On the page Dirty Drew is trying to sleep, but can't because it is so cold. On the same notebook page Dave has written down the dialogue that goes on the page. Only part of it was changed. Instead of thinking dad-blasted winter, on the finished page Drew thinks "dang snowy storm".

Cerebus 169, page 7


4 comments:

Jeff said...

Doesn't this tie into Cerebus' pending ascension? IDK. But I seem to remember (without [you know], actually rereading) that there were several odd things occurring in Iest (?), just before Cerebus took off for the heavens. And, BTW, who better for them to happen to than Dirty Drew and his brother? Well-meaning, but malicious, idiots.

(Not to get political in the real world, but does that sound familiar?)

Tony Dunlop said...

"Well-meaning but malicious?" You must use a different dictionary than I do.

Anonymous said...

Classic Cerebus. The comic we all knew and loved.

Jeff said...

Tony, they meant well in trying to help Cerebus (after he foiled their kidnaping attempt), but they were malicious towards one another.