Bits and Pieces from Jaka's Story

 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 just looked at Dave Sim’s fourteenth Cerebus notebook last week in Jaka and Missy Part Two. And as that title suggests, the notebook covers Cerebus #114 through 117. This week we’re jumping from the start of the notebook to closer to the end. 

Page 63 of the notebook has a bunch of different stuff from early in Jaka’s Story. The part that caught my eye was the sketch of Rick and Cerebus. It is the line from Cerebus #117 page 6 (aka page 56 of Jaka’s Story):

Listen. Kid. Cerebus is in Love with your wife.

Notebook #14, page 63

However, Rick instead of saying ‘I know’ says ‘Yeah’. 

There also looks like there were plans to move the fallen demon head and another more unbelievable one of Pud decks a customer. As if.

There is also some dialogue between Jaka and Rick about calling Cerebus by another name. This page looks like Dave wrote down some stuff, and then put the notebook down. Then came back to it to write some more stuff down, and then put it down. Doing that a few times until the page was full.