Thursday 20 February 2020

The Thing on Cerebus' Head

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.

Last October we saw a page from Dave Sim's eleventh notebook in See You in Court. The notebook covers issues #96 through 102 and had 114 pages scanned.

On page 91 of the notebook at the top of the page are three pages of thumbnails and some dialogue:

Notebook 11, page 91
The thumbnails are for issue #100 pages 7 though 9 or Church & State II pages 983 through 985:

Click to make much larger
The dialogue on the notebook is pretty close to the final page. The one difference is with the final panel of page 8 with Cerebus' dialogue.

Down the bottom of the page are quick summaries for issues #101 and 102. The summary for issue 101 just looks like a list of guest stars. Not too many of them actually show up. And there is someone not on that list that actually shows up. "Farmer chap" is that supposed to be the wuffa wuffa guy? And Katrina was set to show up as well? This is a bit different than issue 102.

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