Take Two of Cerebus Talking to Astoria in Cerebus #37

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 week in Cerebus after Talking to Jaka in Cerebus #36 we looked at Dave Sim’s third Cerebus notebook. Specifically, we looked at page 1, which showed a different conversation between Astoria and Cerebus in Cerebus #37 then the one that actually happened.

This week, we’re looking at page #5 from that same notebook. This one shows the same scene – Astoria talking to Cerebus after he left the greenhouse – but the dialogue is starting to change.

There are small thumbnails of the first five pages of issue #37. Along with Astoria giving Cerebus a hard time about where he has been. Some bits of it made the final comic, and others did not. Some one liners from Astoria that weren’t used:

“You want to throw away you whole diplomatic career is that it?”

“If you’re thinking of having a bath, you can forget it – there isn’t time.”

“Haven’t even got your diplomatic sash on”.

While there is unused dialogue, the part about the two of them walking into an empty room ended up being  in the final issue.