The Deciding Vote

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 #4 just last month in Decisions Decisions. As I said back then: the notebook covers Cerebus issues #41 to 45 with 99 pages out of 108 pages scanned. This past March we saw a page from Cerebus #44, the "wuffa wuffa" issue, page 59. Now I'd like to like to show you pages 57 and 58, which also show bits from that same issue.

On page 57 we see Sargent Preston Roach and some of Lord Storms'end's dialogue.

Notebook 4, page 57

The next page has more sketches of the Roach driving the sled and some tiny thumbnails of the first five pages of the issue. We also see a thumbnail of the cover to Cerebus #44, of which we see a larger sketch on page 59. That sketch however, was not to be used.

Notebook 4, page 58