Cerebus #98 Page 10 Layout

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 week we saw a page from Dave Sim’s eleventh notebook that featured layouts for two pages from Cerebus #98. That page of the notebook was orientated in ‘portrait’. As I was looking through the notebook, I saw three pages that were rotated 90° and are in landscape layout. We’ve seen two of those pages already, pages 51 & 53, in The Trial.

The third page is page 55 and shows us a page from Cerebus #98. It is page 10 from that issue, or if you’re reading the phonebooks, Church & State II, page 946. I left this page in super high res, I just cropped it a bit and put it in jpg format. So it is large, but not as large as the pages in the digital archive. I’m hoping you’ll click on it to see the full size image so you can see Dave’s pencils under the pen:

Notebook #11, page 55

Pretty much the same layout as the finished page. Even the dialogue on the left of the page, is pretty much the same. With the exception of Cerebus’ comment to Astoria. The dialogue in the note book originally had ‘Astoria? Let’s hear your story’ and bits of it were crossed out and instead changed to ‘Astoria? Let’s have it” which is what made the final page:

Cerebus #98, page 10

Pretty closed to the notebook, with the exception of the way some characters are facing and of course, Gerhard’s backgrounds.