Melmoth Character Sketches

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 18th notebook used in the creation of Cerebus covers Cerebus issues #136 through 141.  The notebook cover says it came with 80 pages, but only 64 pages were scanned. There were 8 blank pages in the notebook, and the remainder were torn out at some point. Well, except page 73/74, there was a small corner of that left in the notebook, but it wasn’t scanned as there wasn’t anything on it. We last saw some pages from this notebook in April of 2020’s Cinnamon Tea.

A couple weeks ago we saw Doris, the second of the two waitress who serve Cerebus. So when I saw a sketch of Janice, the first waitress, I stopped for a closer look at the page.  The page opens with a quick bit on Cerebus #139. Then we get some dialogue between Cerebus and Mick. 

Notebook #18, page 36

On the next page we have some more sketches – Dino and Sebastien Melmoth. There is a list of characters and some play titles.

Notebook #18, page 37