Cerebus is a Terrible Person

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 last saw pages from Dave Sim’s 24th Cerebus notebook in Deep and Meaningfuls from November of 2018. With 138 pages scanned in the 24th notebook covers Cerebus #192 through 211. As I was skimming through it last week looking for pages for Matt, I saw this page:

Notebook #24, page 33

Cerebus sitting down thinking how he is a terrible person and Dave talking to him. The ‘2 pages of thinking about it’ came before page 255.

The issue box above him for 200 made me scratch my head, I didn’t think that happened in 200. I thought 200 was Cerebus wandering around Juno and calling Aardvark-Vanaheim asking to speak with Dave’s boss.

So I looked in Minds. The page that this became is in Cerebus #199, page 9:

Cerebus #199, page 9 (aka Minds page 255)

The text is pretty much the same. Instead of ‘you’ll be there’ the notebook has ‘you’ll get there’. The finished page also has Dave saying at the end ‘Does that sound like a destination to you?’