Lord Julius Banter from Cerebus #160

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 twentieth notebook in February of 2019 in Looked Like A Hyena.  The notebook covers Cerebus issues #153 through 164 and had 59 pages scanned. Looking through the pages I saw some Lord Julius dialogue, and that usually makes me chuckle.

The notebook page shows Lord Julius talking wit the Eye of the Pyramid assassin from Cerebus #160:

Notebook 20, page 30

The sketch of the top of the page matches up with panel of page 200 of Flight, aka page 14 of Cerebus #160. The dialogue has circles with numbers in them. Those numbers match up with panel numbers of page 200. It looks like Dave originally had the dialogue for panel 4 as:

We are the hammer of vengeance we will crush your

And the ‘we will crush your’ was removed. Dave also updated moved the original dialogue for panel 5 to panel 4. The dialogue with the changes made on the notebook page matches up with the final dialogue on the finished page. 

The next page of the notebook continues the conversation between Lord Julius and the assassin, which continues on page 201 of Flight.  On this notebook page the dialogue doesn’t have the circled numbers above it, but it does read like a standard comic book page. Lord Julius dialogue in panel two originally said:

Well actually it’s a little closer to the floor than it used to be I’ll give you that.

And Dave marked it up and changed it to:

Really? And I was thinking it’s a little closer to the floor than it used to be.

The dialogue once again matches up with the finish page. Even the ‘slash’ at the end.

Notebook 20, page 31

Did you notice the handwriting at the top of the notebook page? It is in pencil and very light. It says:

Isn’t right now a good time to call me? I’m probably missing you right now.

Well, that definitely isn’t Dave’s handwriting, and I don’t think he would write that to himself. . .so who is it?