Jaka's Tale of a Mouse in a Mudhole

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 week we looked at a page of Dave Sim’s fourteenth notebook that had a timeline for Cerebus which Jeff commented “What the? Five lines?!? To quote a currently non-covid presidential candidate, "C'mon, man!"” Okey doke. Lets look at a couple more pages from the fourteenth notebook which had a . . .bit more text.

Notebook 14, page 17

A sketch of what I’m assuming is someone – probably nurse – holding Missy, is at the top. Then a couple of interesting quotes:

Satan is the sound of a vacuum filling.

Debate on television is the conversational equivalent of the hurry-up offense. 

And then the start of some text. As you can tell, the text is about Jaka and Missy. If you guessed this notebook is about Jaka’s Story, you are correct. It covers Cerebus #113 through 117. 

Umm. I don’t think we ever heard the tale of the mouse with his friend Schmedlap who swam all the way down the river. The next page? Yup, another page of text.

Notebook 14, page 18

More Missy and Jaka. More of the mouse in the mudhole. And then we get to something familiar: the pageant game. 

Next: Even more text?