Punchline for President

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 last looked at Dave Sim's first Cerebus notebook, which covers Cerebus #20 to 28, in July of 2018's Adam Beduin. The notebook had 194 pages scanned. Prior to notebook #1, Dave would use pieces of loose paper for his notes on Cerebus.

On page 67 of the notebook we see what appears to be some dialogue between Cerebus and President Weisshaupt.

Notebook #1, page 67

So I went to page 6 of Cerebus #22, well, actually page 460 of this particular printing of the phonebook (if you're looking in an eleventh printing or higher, it is on page 472 due to the inclusion of the Lord Silverspoon story from The Buyer's Guide to Comics), and I looked for this dialogue. Or something resembling it. Nothing really matched that I could see.

So I went to page 68 of the notebook, only to see more of the same dialogue.

Notebook #1, page 68

Well, that explains why this particular dialogue doesn't appear as is. Dave crossed it all out, and didn't go with it.