The Countess Calls the Boys to Dinner

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.

Dave Sim’s ninth notebook used in the production of Cerebus covered Cerebus #80 to 86. There were 118 pages out of 200 scanned and a total of 17 blank pages that were not scanned. As I was looking at the pages, page #43 jumped out at me. It has three pages sketched out for Cerebus #84:

Notebook #9, page 43

The text right under the issue number box is the dialogue for the Roach on page three in the second panel. Lets see how those pages compared to the final page:

Left: Cerebus #84 page 1 (aka page 655 of Church & State II) 

Right: The notebook

Looks pretty dang close to me, with the exception of a Gerhard background as oppose to the Dave Sim one.

Left: Cerebus #84 page 2 (aka page 656 of Church & State II) 

Right: The notebook

Umm. The background on that top panel is different. The clowns are walking past a building instead of an alley, but the layout, including word balloons, stays the same.

Left: Cerebus #84 page 3 (aka page 657 of Church & State II) 

Right: The notebook

Once again, pretty dang close to the finished page.