Notes on Cerebus #51 & 52

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.

For the last couple of weeks we’ve look at pages 1 & 2 and then 3 & 4 of Dave Sim’s sixth Cerebus notebook. So why not continue that trend and look at page 5 and 6? Dave’s sixth notebook covers Cerebus #52 through 59. Page 4 had notes on Cerebus #52 and the On Governing story from that issue, and the next page in the notebook continues with that:

Notebook #6, page 5

The majority of the page has notes for On Governing, and the bottom of the page has a list of potential characters for Cerebus #51 and then some drawing of Harlon Ellison. 

The next page then has some sketches of page layouts for Cerebus #51, an outline for pages #15 through 20 with notes for page 20 of:

Cerebus leaving 

“hey you up there where are we docked”

Port Seprania it’s the only port between IEST and TOGITH

Do you know how to get a sword out of a barrel lid

Sure I’ve got an axe in my cabin

That’s good enough for Cerebus. Don’t think it hasn’t been a nightmare because it has.

Notebook #6, page 5

That leads into page 7 of the notebook which has thumbnails and dialogue for Cerebus #51. We’ve already seen it in Bureaucrat Pudding. Then on page 8, which we saw in one of the first posts on the notebooks, Dave Sim’s Notebooks: “On Governing”, we see some thumbnails for the layouts to Cerebus #52 and writing for On Governing.