Wednesday 27 December 2017

Boom. Big Boom. Big Bang.

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.

Dave Sim's notebook #12 last appeared in AMoC back in March of 2016 (before the great renumbering when it was still #8) in Not The  Trial. Notebook #8 covers issues #96 through 102. It originally had 140 pages, but only 114 were scanned, there were 15 blanks pages and the rest were missing.

On pages 4 and 5 there appears at first glance to be a poem. But reading it, it sounds like a monologue about Tarim and Terim, about the void and the light. Something that would fit right in at the end of Church & State II when Cerebus is listening to the Judge.

Notebook #12, page 4
Notebook #12, page 5
But that isn't the Judge speaking. Unless it was the character that was to become the Judge.

3 comments:

Travis Pelkie said...

Yeah, that's a Yiddish sounding dialect. I can't remember the reference for the "character that would become the Judge", but something hazy in my memory is saying that it was supposed to be a Jewish character. I think.

Oy, my memory anymore!

Tony Dunlop said...

Sounds like a Mel Brooks character.

Jeff said...

Carol Kane: "Vot did he say?"

Billy Crystal: "Tu blave."

"Vot!?! No he didn't!"

"Tu blave. He said 'tu blave'."

"No, he said, 'true love'. True Love!"