Changes to the Princess of Palnu

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.

In Get Him Out of the Hotel from October 2017 we last saw a page from Dave Sim's 14th Cerebus notebook, which covers Cerebus #113 to 117. There were 66 pages scanned from the notebook, and 8 blank pages, leaving 6 pages taken out of the notebook. This notebook contained many pages full of writing. Writing Oscar's Princess of Palnu storyline. Some pages had black ink, and others like this page, had what appears to be a black ink that faded differently than some other black in.

Notebook 14, page 31 (click for  larger view)

Walls of  text in a black ink that appears faded over the year. One word, solemnly, stands out as a dark black ink.

On the next page, there are more mark-ups visible.

Notebook 14, page 31 (click for  larger view)

Having the two different "colors" of ink, it makes i easier to compare the changes Dave did as he was writing or shortly thereafter, and some later, perhaps hours or days after the fact.