Cerebus' Vision in Guys

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.

So a bit ago King Matt  asked about seeing any notebook pages for these pages:

Guys pages 60 and 61 (aka Cerebus #203 pages 12 & 13)

Form and Void pages 674 – 675 (aka Cerebus #265 pages 8 & 9)

Well,  if the notebooks have info on those pages, which notebooks would we look at? Notebook #24 contains info on issues #197 through 211. Notebook #31 contains info on issues #256 through 265.

So I went through notebook #24 first, thinking if this page showed up this early, it probably had something in the earlier notebook. Nothing. That notebook mainly contained items for issue #197, the whole Jaka / Cerebus / Joanne triangle, Cerebus #200, and for Pluto and Squinteye.  So I went to Notebook #22 (issues #186 to 201) and notebook #23 (“Mothers & Daughters and ’92 Tour”) and didn’t see anything about these pages there.

Notebook #24’s cover said there were 160 total pages, but only 96 were scanned, and there were 52 missing pages. Fifty two missing pages. Could it have been on one of those? I doubt it. 

So why aren’t these pivotal pages in the notebook? I’m thinking Dave had thought of this scene many many many years prior to it and had it as a point on the Cerebus plot map he kept in his head. As Dave stated on The Moment of Cerebus blog back in May: 

There are long stretches where there is no Notebook dress rehearsal because I didn't need it. THIS one I KNOW how to do. THIS ten-page section I can do in my sleep. THIS five-page section has been "done" for about eight years. 

But if you're looking for info on the pages, back in March of 2006 Dave did answer some questions regarding this scene and how the two versions are different: 

Q5: If we refer to pages 60 & 61 of *Guys*, we see the first version of the scene outside Cerebus' parents’ house in a drunken vision. Not every line matches up. Some lines previously spoken are thought, and some words previously thought are spoken. You have stated that this was a bad dream, and that a probable reason that Cerebus inserted Astoria into the scene is because he associates her with bad things. Now, however, Astoria has now been replaced by Jaka. Curiously, both times we see Cerebus' reflection in the window, his severed ear is on the wrong side. The empty chair sits in the same place, and the deck is partially torn up. This could all suggest that these events have happened more than these two times, in different realities, and Sand Hills Creek is some kind of dimensional nexus. Was the vision in Guys a signal that he should come back home to Sand Hills Creek?

Dave: No, on the dimensional nexus. A dimensional nexus or the idea that alternate dimensions exist, it seems to me is a way of simultaneously acknowledging and denying free will i.e. "I made a bad choice but somewhere in another dimension I made a good choice, so that makes it okay." It seems to me a core element of belief in God that a choice is a choice and it eliminates all other choices. As to whether the dream was a signal? Yes, definitely. It was time, or rather past time. This is how the happy homecoming is going to play out because it's too late to play out any other way. The event was preordained in a real sense. He had obviously had the dream before and my own theory is that we all have these sorts of super-reality core moments in our lives that we visit and revisit and usually forget in our dreams

The moment is on the cusp of the watershed moment when he crosses over from Jaka as Core Reality to Jaka as Regretted Mistake. His dreaming mind cast Astoria in the role because his unconscious dreaming mind was aware that this was an unhappy event and would be incapable of seeing any event that included Jaka to be an unhappy event even though every event in his life that included Jaka or someone who looked like Jaka had been and would continue to be an unhappy event. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." "Huh?"

The severed ear is on the wrong side because I made a mistake, which I have admitted before and which presumably I will have to admit every time we discuss the reflection in the window. I made a mistake and put the severed ear on the wrong side in the reflection. Ger didn't catch it, so there it is.

Q5 cont: Is it a signal that it was too late, seeing that the chair was already empty? Is the lone, empty chair some kind of Lockout tradition suggesting, perhaps, that Cerebus is some kind of Moorcockian "Eternal Prodigal Son?" Or a magical totem symbolizing that there can never be a "significant other" in Cerebus' life? (pp674-675/i265)

Dave: Both, actually, and many others besides. On the one hand he has his fulfillment to attain to as the Great Cerebus as described in Rick's book and obviously material goods are going to be of no use in that. In a human sense, it's "Oh, how sad. His childhood home has fallen to ruin and it's been looted and both of his parents are dead." In a theological sense it would be more, "Ah good, a blank slate that can be filled up with the things of God now that all this detritus is gone".

I also looked in the notes section of Form & Void, To Ham & Ham Not, but there was nothing in there regarding these particular pages. So sorry Boss Man, but there ain't nothing in the notebook for this particular scene.