A Page Layout Meant For Cerebus #124

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 sixteenth notebook covers Cerebus #122 through  125 and had  67 pages scanned. We last saw it in September of 2019 in Talking Back To Your Television. 

On page 42 of the notebook, it looks like we have a layout for page 4 and some dialogue for page 8 of issue 124.

Notebook #16, page 42

However, looking at page 7 of Cerebus #124, aka Jaka’s Story page 216, that isn’t it. I found it on page 4 of that issue, and the only thing that looks remotely like it is the tope left panel:

Cerebus #124, page 4

And that dialogue for page 8? It doesn’t show up on page 8. In fact, we don’t see Cerebus, uh, Fred, playing Rick until page 9 of the issue. And the dialogue on the notebook page never shows up in the finished book. When we do see Fred and Rick playing, it is Rick’s turn and Cerebus wins his fifth game.