Daughter of Palnu: Lessons

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've seen some pages from Dave Sim's notebook #12 three times before. Most recently just this past February in What Is Cerebus About, which looked at his Note From The President from Cerebus #122. The other two times was some pages about Oscar and about young Jaka in Daughter of Palnu.

Notebook #12 had 98 pages scanned and covered issues 118 to 122 of Cerebus. As you've probably figured out from the title of this week's look at the notebook pages, this continues our look at young Jaka and we pick up on the next page of the notebook, page 25:

Notebook #12, page 25

The sketch is a of Jaka at age seven at her desk at her lessons. The finished panel can be seen on page 114 of the Jaka's Story phonebook (or issue #119, page 4 if you're following along in the single issues).

Jaka's Story, page 114

The text shown on page 25 is different from the finished text. I think the #2 means it is the second flashback in issue 119. If you're looking for #1, it happens on page 1 of the issue and is shown on page 24 of the notebook, which is shown in the above referenced Daughter of Palnu. There are times when Dave will rewrite passages from the book in his notebooks several times, but not this one. I see references to the young Jaka bits from issue #119, and this is always referenced as "Lessons".