Cerebus #98 page layouts

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 Dave Sim’s eleventh notebook used in the production of Cerebus this past January in Posey, Bishop Powers, and Tracing Paper. The 129 pages of the notebook cover Cerebus #96 through 102. Some of those pages have page layouts in them. Of course, those pages layouts don’t have Gerhard’s beautiful backgrounds. So it is fun to see what Dave sketched out in his notebook – if anything – for backgrounds, and what Gerhard did on the final page.

So here is page 49 of notebook 11, notice up at the top it has a 4 and a 5 in the upper left corner of each of the sketches:

Notebook #11, page 49

Those sketches are of pages #4 & 5 of Cerebus #98, aka Church & State II pages 940 and 941.  Both page sketches are done with pencil and then black pen on top. So if you make with the clicky and look at the larger picture, you should be able to see what Dave had sketched in for a background as he didn’t put ink over those. . .except for two tall panels on ‘page 5’. 

Then looking at the finished pages from Church & State II:

Cerebus #98, page 4 & 5

Whoa. While the notebook sketches and the pages look similar enough that I was able to match them up, they do have some differences. Both with the characters that Dave put on the page and then Gerhard’s backgrounds. 

Hey, there appears to have been a word balloon on page 4’s top panel, but on the actual page, the only word balloon on these two pages is Bishop Powers on page 5.