How the Countess Got Her Money?

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 ninth Cerebus notebook covered material in Cerebus #80 through #86 and had 118 pages out of 200 pages. There were 17 blank pages and the rest were missing. Going through the pages, on page 31 I saw this quote from someone I assumed to be Countess Michelle talking about Weisshaupt:

“He had his first heart attack when Lord Julius’ father died and left half of his estate to me.”

I had to make sure it was the Countess, so I went back to page 30:

Notebook #9, page 30

Very little of this dialogue was used in issue #83 on page 9, or Church & State II page 643 if you’re using the phonebooks The main part that was used: “Did I tell you that I was the first female allowed to attend one of his university.”

The next paragraph had bits used, but it was re-written from the finished dialogue. And then it takes a left turn from the finished dialogue. In issue #83 the countess explains that when she graduated she was given an apartment and a job as a clerk from Weisshaupt, continues on about books and how Weisshaupt reduced her salary so she couldn’t afford the books, and then a courier showed up wit ha letter  from Lord Julius telling Michelle that she had “won the Palnan Endowment for Advanced Study and Miss Congeniality Prize for 1412 and that the cash award was two hundred thousand Palnan crowds.”

A bit different from the original state on page 31:

Notebook #9, page 31

“He (Weisshaupt) believed that some woman was going to stand against him. He had his first heart attack when Lord Julius’ father died and left half of his estate to me.”

Makes me wonder if that is how the Countess had gotten her money when Cerebus first meets her in Church & State I.

Though when asked this question on Michelle, this was Dave’s response:

Q. What was up with the Countess? Who is she? What was her role in the larger story intended to be vs. what her role actually was?  

Dave: My intention with the Countess was to document a female who really just wanted to be a regular female and ended up in this idealized Kevillist circumstance owing to inherited wealth or having Weisshaupt for a sugar daddy.  I’ll leave those two as open questions—as a reader (I didn’t remember hinting at Weisshaupt as sugar daddy, but that seems to me to be what I had the Countess talking around in her second appearance).