Two Days Before

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.

If you have a copy of the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury, which not only showcases all the covers from Cerebus but gives some notes from Dave and Gerhard on the covers and it also has some preliminary sketches from Dave Sim's notebooks, you might have seen one of the preliminary sketches that Dave did for the cover of Cerebus #35.

Cerebus #35 cover page from the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury

That is page #153 from notebook #2. As you can see, the sketch on the notebook page has some similar elements - the characters and what they are doing, but the layout is different.

Prior to that sketch, Dave did a different sketch for the cover to Cerebus #35 on page 149.

Notebook #2, page 149

So Cerebus standing on a chair getting fitted for a suit instead of carrying the materials for it. And instead of Bran it is Astoria standing beside Cerebus.