Blossom of My Sordid Youth

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 saw pages from Dave Sim's ninth notebook was in February of 2018 in Give Me Strength. It covers Cerebus #80 to 86 and had 135 pages out of 200 pages, with 17 of those pages being blank so only 118 scanned pages.

On page 13 of the notebook there were some blank ink marks surrounding a thumbnail for a page and some dialogue for a page which was done in blue point pen.

Notebook #9, page 13

This is pretty much the entirety of page 9 of Cerebus  #82, page 623 of Church & State II. The dialogue is all there, only a few minor changes to the panel layout. For example, in  the  fourth panel instead of Astoria and Lord Julius, it is just Lord Julius. In the first panel Lord Julius also has his left hand to his heart instead of behind his head.

Cerebus #82, page 9