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 saw a page from Dave Sim’s eighth Cerebus notebook last week in Stairs to the Regency, which showed us a glimpse of Cerebus #70 on page 14 of the notebook. Today we’ll see pages 38 and 39 of the notebook and fast forward to Cerebus #73.
On page 38 of the notebook we see the text ‘page 4’ and some layouts for, you guessed it, page 4 of Cerebus #73, aka Church & State I page 436. Here are the two side by side.
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| Notebook page & finished page - Click for much bigger |
A total of four tall panels, with Mrs Henrot-Gutch at the top and Boobah at the bottom. The struggling of Boobah isn’t quite the same, but it is pretty dang close, and we even see Mrs Henrot-Gutch’s word balloons, just not her dialogue.
On the next page of the notebook we see the text ‘page 5’, and some sketches, but those sketches actually correspond with a bit from page 5 and a bit from page 6. Perhaps at one point Dave wanted to put it all on page 5, but the next page of the notebook – not shown here – has the label ‘page 8’.
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| Notebook #8, page 39 |
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| Cerebus #73, pages 5 & 6 |
The notebook page also shows the number boxes for as Dave labeled it on the notebook page the “Jaka mini-series’. In the top right corner of the notebook page is the text:
Bear: She’s got her husband with her
However, at the end of Cerebus #73, Bear asks Cerebus if he wanted him to just bring her. To which Cerebus said aye, and Bear responded that was good as she wanted to bring her husband. That would’ve made the “Jaka mini-series” a bit different if Rick came along at this point in the story. We also see some Jaka dialogue down at the bottom of the notebook page.
5 comments:
And I'm pretty sure that Jaka dialogue was never used. Very telling it is, though; since "they way (he was) when (they) first met" was, you know, drugged...
I wanted to ask something.
If I buy this volume (Jaka's Story) from the official site, will it be in the same quality as the ones that are available on here:
https://m.comixology.com/series-list/126641/2
Or are the ones from the official site older scans? Just wondering since it seems there's not much info about it. And I have seen some "remastered" volumes from up to Jaka's Story but only on physical.
I've been waiting for someone "in charge" (that's a rather loose term here, I know) to respond to Anonymous; I'm just a fanboy, but here's my understanding:
There is no "official site" for Cerebus merchandise. My best guess is you are talking about "cerebusdownloads.com." If that is the case - the following is my understanding; someone "official" please correct me if I'm wrong.
Any volume highlighted in green is the "restored/remastered" version. Any volume not highlighted in green is the old, crummy version.
How'd I do? Matt? David? George? Benjamin? Eddie? Anybody...? (See, I told you nobody is in charge...)
I was considering something just about the same as what you wrote, Tony. So you did fine. Dave is ultimately in charge. Dave is not online. Things take time.
CerebusDownloads.com = about as "official" as it gets.
I was trying to be funny. Sorry if it came across as critical. I have nothing but respect for the AV team.
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