Before the Trial

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 11th Cerebus notebook covers Cerebus #96 to 102 and we last saw it this past July in Pointy Hats.

Dave has some tighten page lay-outs in this notebook, and page 37 has the lay-outs for pages 16 and 17 of Cerebus #97:

Notebook #11, page 37

Here is a close-up of the page lay-outs, if you click you can zoom in more and see the pencil under the inks:

 Notebook #11, page 37 close up

And the finished page with Gerhard backgrounds:

Church & State II, pages 932 - 933