Jaka's Sweet old Aunt Victoria

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.

Here is a notebook that we haven't looked at yet: #13. It covers Cerebus #122 to 125, though it has plot summaries up to at least issue #130. Clocking in at 80 pages on the cover, I only had to scan in 67 pages, and there were 7 blank pages. I even made a note that "page #049 has a piece of tape on the bottom left corner." Now that I look at the scan - I can't see a tear, and the piece of tape is about the size of a dime.

On page 46 of the notebook, the entire page is taken up with some insight into 'why would Jaka marry Rick'. At first it almost sounds like a page from the story, but then Dave addresses the Cerebus readers directly. Perhaps a Note From the President or a response to a Aardvark Comment letter? This writing doesn't really sound familiar at all:

Notebook #13 page 46

On page 45 there is what appears to be a photocopy of the artwork for the cover to issue #124 and on page 47 is a rough outline of that issue ("1  2  3  Jaka's cleavage 4 5 6 7 - Am I ugly? I feel ugly can I have a drink 7 basketball" ). So perhaps the writing on page 46 is just an unfinished and unused Note From the President.

Then on page 56 and 57 we get some drawings of Jaka in different outfits. Around the outfit on page 56 Dave wrote some dialogue between "Jaka's sweet old Aunt Victoria" and Oscar from issue 125.

Notebook #13 page 56

On page 57 we get the final bits of dialogue between the two and a Pud and Oscar talking about the guffin.

Notebook #13 page 57