Cerebus #93 Page Layouts and Dialogue

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 a page from Dave Sim’s 10th Cerebus notebook in March of 2020 in Nobody Feeling Brave Today? The notebook had 115 pages scanned and covers Cerebus #87 through 95. Back in July of 2014 we saw pages #72 & 73 from this notebook in an entry called  “Dave Sim’s Notebooks: Lord Julius”. Those notebook pages were sketches and dialogued used in Cerebus #93 page 4 & 5. 

Well, how about the next couple of pages – pages 74 and 75? Turns out these pages would both be visible if the notebook was laid flat and they both cover Cerebus #93 pages 6 and 7, aka Church & State II pages 842 & 843. So we’ll see them as if we had the notebook opened up to them:

Notebook #10, pages 74 & 75
Click the picture to make it bigger. . .

Page 6 in the finished issue looks very very similar to the notebook page. The panels are the same shape / size relatively speaking, and Bishop Powers and Cerebus are in the same panels and poses. Then the last three pages do show the crowd outside the hotel. Then see how there are circled numbers in the panels? Go to the next page of the notebook where the dialogue is located. The dialogue is numbered and it matches up with the finished page. 

Lord Julius’ dialogue in from number 5 is slightly different. In the notebook Dave wrote:

“I’ll wager by dinner time you could build a mighty fine suspension bridge with the tendons in his calf…”

And the final dialogue: “I’ll wager you could build a mighty fine suspension bridge with his tendons about now…”

The layout for page 7 has the same amount of panels, but they aren’t quite the same size as the final page. Though the carriage does appear in the far right of the page. The dialogue for this page is again on the next page of the notebook. Dave stopped labeling the panel dialogue with #5, but down the bottom of that page, where it starts with ‘Most Holy’ – that is the dialogue between the carriage driver and Cerebus pretty much word for word. 

The dialogue in the middle of the page between the numbered dialogue and the carriage driver’s dialogue with Cerebus is some dialogue between Lord Julius and Cerebus. That dialogue is used on page 8 of Cerebus #93. 

Yes, you can make out the other side of the notebook page where a couple page layouts are – for pages #8 and 9 of Cerebus #93.