Jaka and Missy Part Two

 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 October we saw several pages from Dave Sim’s fourteenth Cerebus notebook, which covers Cerebus #114 through 117, in Jaka, Magic, and the Pageant Story. That notebook had sixty-six out of eighty pages scanned, and it had a total of 8 blank pages. 

Looking through the pages of that notebook, page five jumped out at me. It has several sketches of young Jaka and her doll Missy. There is no pencil under these sketches, it is just pen on the page, quick sketches of ideas.

Notebook #14, page 5

It looks like Dave was sketching out ideas for pages 14 and 15 of Cerebus #114, aka Jaka’s Story pages 24 and 25.

Cerebus #114 pages 14 and 15

The text on the notebook pages doesn’t match up to the finished pages, but to me it looks more like an overview of the first couple issues of Jaka’s Story. What do you think?