Dialogue from Reads

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 a bit from Dave Sim’s 21st notebook back in February of 2019 in Dang Snowy Storm. The notebook covers Cerebus #164 through 187 and 260 pages were scanned. So as we promised Jeff last week, some pages that covered Reads. Though, I’ll ease everyone into it, so instead of walls of  text, which is what starts the pages for Cerebus #175, we’ll go to the three pages I found that cover the dialogue between Po, Cirin, Cerebus, and Astoria for the first couple issues of Reads.

The first page covers all the dialogue in Cerebus #175 between that group. Well, between Po and Cirin. And some of it wasn’t used and other bits were pushed out to Cerebus #176:

Notebook #21, page 147

The line on the page jumps the dialogue to page 41 of Reads with Astoria’s line “And then there were four.” The rest of that dialogue? It isn’t in Cerebus #176. Some of it is what Po says to Astoria in Cerebus #177.  But it isn’t in the same order as in the book, and some of it wasn’t used.

Notebook #21, page 148

And some of that dialogue on page 148 is what Po says to Cirin – the opening line of “Cirin. Astoria had a miscarriage. There is no child.” But the dialogue that is on page 78 of Reads has more added to it then just those two sentences. And Po doesn’t say the line “Why do you keep the charade going?” Instead it was switched to “Still you keep your vendetta alive – another paper tiger.” 

Then on the next page of the notebook we get to what Po says to Cerebus on page 80 of Reads.

Notebook #21, page 149

But instead of most of that dialogue, we get Po talking about the different things that have happen to him, Cerebus, and Cirin, that could be described as powers, but aren’t since they don’t have control over them. 

The next page of the notebook goes into a long page full of text for the Victor Reid part of Cerebus #176. Looking forward though the notebook, some of the above dialogue repeats on page 158, but on that page it resembles more of the finished dialogue we see in the book. Perhaps we’ll take a look at that next week unless Jeff just wants more walls of text. And I mean they are just top to bottom pages of handwritten text.