Trying to Outsmart Lord Julius

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 looked at Dave Sim's second Cerebus notebook back in September in The Table Next To The Bed. It covers Cerebus #27 through 37. While it had 198 pages out of 200 scanned and we've seen pages from it nine times, we've only seen one page from the first thirty pages of the notebook. It appears those pages are for Cerebus #28, aka Mind Game II.

So I pulled that biweekly issue to look at what notebook pages Dave had shown us for it. That is when I saw this quote from Dave "Wouldn't you know? I go looking for some interesting pages for issue 28 and what do I find? Twenty pages of closely-spaced Suenteus Po / Cerebus dialogue."

The dialogue in Cerebus #28 is not that closely spaced that it takes up all 20 pages of the issue. So what is in those twenty pages that wasn't used in the story? Good question. Looking at Cerebus #28, there are four pages of Po / Cerebus dialogue before we get to the dialogue shown on page 1, which was shown in August of 2016 in Albatross, Too.

So let's see page two

Notebook 2, page 2 (click to make larger)

There is some discussion about Lord Julius and if he is an orthodox Tarimite of a Cirinist. Cerebus tells a story of how he was discussing the Eye in the Pyramid rebels with Lord Julius, and how Lord Julius was opening envelopes while listening to Cerebus. That those envelopes contained "Money. Crown notes, securities, bonds, coins made of white gold, rare gems. . .Thousands and thousands of crowns and Cerebus only watched for a matter of minutes."

Notebook 2, page 3, click to make larger

At the bottom of the page has some dialogue that starts there and carries over to page 3 of the notebook, none of which appears in Cerebus #28:

Cerebus: Cerebus always measures others by their sword arms, their quickness. Beyond  that he had never seen any value in humans. Cerebus could have snapped Lord Julius in two without working up a sweat.
Po: Why didn't you?
Cerebus: Cerebus couldn't make it work like it was. . .Cerebus tried to figure out how much of the loot he could carry. Maybe one sack the size of the one he was taking the envelopes out of. If Cerebus was to keep one hand for dispatching the guards, he might be able to carry half a sack. Even then there was no guarantee that we would live to reach the gate. A crossbow or a spear would. . .
Po: I see.
Cerebus: Cerebus thought about killing the guards to grab loot and we'd all make a run for it splitting the proceeds later on.
Po: Why didn't you?
Cerebus: These city dwellers, they. . .Each of those guards had an apartment in the trade building some of them had probably served the house of Tavers for twenty years. They had families and more money than most Sepran officers. They were settled. Cerebus doesn't understand it, but Cerebus. . .
Po: Recognized a no-win situation?
Cerebus: Aye.  That's why Cerebus left. In his spare time he started making friends with city-guards, high ranking cabinet members - nothing elaborate, just laying the groundwork for a small conspiracy -- skim a few hundred t thousand crowns off the top and leave before anyone checked the book-keeping.
Po: And?
Cerebus: They were never in the same place two days in a row. When Cerebus asked where they had been transferred to, he was put on Lord Julius' conspiracy report. Cerebus made a few more tries at bribery.