Melmoth One

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.

Last August in Issue Summaries was the last time we saw Dave Sim's notebook #17. The notebook covers Cerebus #127 to 135, which are some of the last issues in Jaka's Story. So when I was looking through the notebook and I saw a bit for Melmoth I did a double take.

Notebook #17, page 65

On page 65, near the end of the notebook, which had 76 pages scanned, shows us Dave's first sketch of a logo for Melmoth and a sketch of Melmoth's Oscar.

That Melmoth logo wasn't the one that was used though.

Cerebus #140 cover