What Shoreline?

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.

Going along the same lines as the last couple of weeks - here are some bits from a notebook only shown here once  before.  This week it is notebook #31 which covers issues 256 through 265. There were 67 out of 80 pages scanned and once again was another Hilroy notebook whose wire spiral was damaged after usage:

Notebook 31, front cover

Page 58 of the notebook appears to have some dialogue that wasn't used in the series. Not that I can find at least. It looks like it should be part of issue 260, when Cerebus and Jaka are trapped in the snowstorm, but I couldn't find it there or anywhere else in Form & Void. The notes in To Ham & Ham Not in the back of Form & Void skip from page 563 to page 581.

Notebook 31, page 58

Most of the conversation is Cerebus wondering where they were after they got caught up in the storm. Cerebus knows they were parallel to the shore line, but didn't know what shore line it was.

The next page of the notebook continues on in the blue pen for a bit. It appears to be the same conversation from the previous page. Then down the bottom the pen changes to black and the conversation continues on about the shore line.

Notebook 31, page 59

A big of the dialogue in the black ink, about following the shoreline north, appears on page 8 of issue 260 (or page 574 in Form & Void). However, on the finished page Cerebus calls it Iest instead of the Dead Salt Locks. Like he forgot about ("heh. going blank like that.) the destruction of Iest during his ordeal in the tent (though he does later remember in his vision of Rick).

The other paragraph gets reworded a big, but is used for the most part. Petrou Pass even gets a mention.