Looking For Old Old Cerebus in the Notebooks

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.

In last week’s post on Dave Sim’s Cerebus notebooks, Cerebus #46 Cover Sketches, Michael R asked “In The Last Day phonebook, in The Last Annotations, on page 250 where it starts The Last Day-page 41 --- Dave said he did a number of pencil drawings of "Old Cerebus" on tracing paper. Did any of the "Old Cerebus" make it in the last Notebook? If it did, can I request it as a post?” So I said I’d take a look at what the notebooks have, and if I didn’t find anything there, I might have other sources.

If “Old Cerebus” was going to be in any notebook, he’d be in the last notebook, #36. But I was skeptical as the notebook has many blank pages. Notebook #36 covers Cerebus #265 through #300, a huge chunk of issues. It only had 58 out of the 108 page scanned. And of those 58 pages that were scanned in, 19 pages only had the issue box # in the upper left corner, just like we saw for Cerebus #300 back in Lots of Dead Cirinists.

Looking at the thumbnails of the pages, I didn’t see anything but text and a few pictures of other characters. I then looked at the full-sized pages, and on page 45 I saw some faint pencil sketches of an old Cerebus:

Notebook #36, page 45

And it isn’t really Old Old Cerebus, just kind of old Cerebus. I went back and looked through Notebook #35 to see if Dave had done any sketches of Old Old Cerebus there, but nope, nothing.

So my other source. . .I’ve got some tracing paper prelim sketches, I thought I’d seen Old Cerebus in there. Nope, it was old Cerebus, but not Old Old Cerebus. 

Seems boss man beat me to the request, and posted his Old Cerebus tracing paper sketches on Saturday, you can see them here. I happen to know where to find a few myself.

So I went to another source: my hard drive. Yes, I pretty much save every Cerebus bit of stuff from the internets I can find. But I do a poor job with pictures of saying where I found it. . .

Which brings us to this sketch by Dave, but it is dated July 28, 2012, way after The Last Day came out:

“Old Cerebus” concept design (nude)

Hey Ron Matt Boss Man – could you ask Dave if he just signed this in July of 2012 and it was actually drawn earlier, or if it was drawn in 2012 and used elsewhere?

Margaret: Dave answered this question in the Please Hold for Dave Sim of March 2022:

While I do a poor job of keeping track of where I found miscellaneous Cerebus art, if I had to guess, I’d guess it was from Brian’s impressive Cerebus original art collection. I couldn’t find it at his Comic Art Fans site, but I did find it on his old site.

Digging through the hard drive, I did find a tracing paper drawing of Old Cerebus in bed:

“Old Cerebus” in bed

And an old Cerebus holding up his pants. Both of these appear to be the type of sketches he’d do for the actual issue.  

“Old Cerebus” holding up his pants

So to answer Michael R’s question, there wasn’t any “old Cerebus” in the notebook. Sounds like a good question for Dave next month.