They're On a Boat

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.

We last saw pages from Dave Sim’s 29th notebook just this past February in She Has Her Palnu Face On. The notebook covers Cerebus #240 through 250 and had 150 pages scanned. Some of those pages were basically full page of art. Like page 7:

Notebook 29, page 7

Looks like page 7 of Cerebus #240

Cerebus #240, page 7 (aka Going Home page 173)

I think it is pretty interesting to see how Gerhard fills out the page with the backgrounds. The boat in panel one – it doesn’t look like much in the notebook, but it looks pretty dang good on the finished page. There are also a few other minor changes.