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 looked at Dave Sim's notebook #23 a couple times before. First in
On Tour' 92 and most recently in June of 2015 in
Shredded Tissue of Lies. It is one of the few Cerebus notebooks that doesn't cover any particular issues but had the note from Dave on it which said "Mothers & Daughters and '92 Tour'. It is also different in that at 5.5" x 8.5" it was smaller than the notebooks usually used. We still haven't seen the front cover yet:
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| Front cover, notebook #23 |
One of the Mothers and Daughters items in the notebook was a couple sketches for the cover of Cerebus #152:
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| Notebook #23, page 47 |
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| Notebook #23, page 49 |
We can see Cerebus rushing towards us, holding something in his left arm and his sword in his right hand. That and the logo in the upper right corner and the only resemblance to the final cover:
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| Cerebus #152 cover |
6 comments:
This is one of my favorite comic book covers ever. I feebly attempted to rip it off for Amelia Rules! issue 14.
What I am surprised by is the 1992 price of $7.10(CAN) for the notebook, although it does appear to be higher quality paper. Also, a nice advert for the ART HOUSE. :)
Jeff S.: Yeah, those are really small sketch-pads, not notebooks -- hence the heftier price.
-- Damian
That is a sweet cover.
$7.10 Canadian is like, a buck and a quarter in real 'murrican money, though, isn't it? Especially in the early '90s?
The inner 12 year old I have wants to add an "F" to the start of the store name and change the H to an N and the U to an I. uh huh huh huh heh heh heh huh!
Reminds me of a recent trip the missus and I took to San Francisco; there were ads, on buses and billboards, for a local arts organization...somehow I don't think they had fully thought out their Web address, which was something like "sfarts.org."
Jimmy! I missed that one! Can you e-mail it to Tim W and have him post it here? I bet it isn't as feeble as you're making it out to be.
Jeff - I think I was hoping that if I had an actual sketch pad instead of a notebook that I might do some more finished things in it (like Bill Sienkiewicz and Paul Pope). Nope. I was always afraid of blowing it all on the sketch and then having the finished piece come out flat.
Major marks to Gerhard on the colour on this one. The blue in the sky is one of those happy accidents where -- even across the magenta/cyan printing spectrum -- you're still got a really nice blue that pulled the whole thing together.
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