Mrs Thatcher

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.

In March we saw a couple pages from Dave's fourteenth notebook, covering issues #127 and #135 it gives us a glimpse into Jaka's Story.

Mrs Thatcher doesn't show up until issue #133, but Dave started doing some sketches of her on page 12 of the notebook:

Notebook #14, page 12

The top two sketches look less like the Cerebus Mrs Snatcher Thatcher and more like the Prime Minister Thatcher. The sketch to the far right between the Prime Minister Thatcher and the Cirinist Thatcher doesn't look like Mrs Thatcher at all, but someone else.

On the next page we can see the Prime Minister Thatcher covered in a see through Cirinist cover.

Notebook #14, page 12

We see here again on page 48, looking more like the Mrs Thatcher from Cerebus, and she is wearing the head piece that we've seen before, not the full head mask as seen on page 13.

Notebook #14, page 46

A couple pages later we see more Mrs Thatcher head sketches, but from the her other side:

Notebook #14, page 49