Summit Enchanted Evening Part Three

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’ve already seen pages 25 and 26 and then 27 and 28 of Dave Sim’s fifth Cerebus notebook, which covers Cerebus #45 through 49 and had 79 out of the 80 pages scanned. What did pages #25 through 28 cover? They covered the dialogue between Lord Julius, Duke Leonardi, and Cerebus in Cerebus #46, Summit Enchanted Evening. Believe it or not, there were a few more pages that contained dialogue for this issue. And somehow, the later pages contained the beginning of summit:

Notebook #5, page 29

At the top of the page is the dialogue continued from page 28, and then down at the bottom of the page under a line is Lord Julius’ dialogue from the opening of the summit. This line from Lord Julius wasn’t used: “If you can’t think of anything nice to say, you’re probably in the right place.”

Then on the next page of the notebook, the dialogue continues, and we have some more rejected dialogue.

Notebook #5, page 30

Lord Julius: Look. The prime rate is 24 percent. I don’t just make it up, you know.

Leonardi: Yes you do.

Lord Julius: Then I could make it 30 percent in your case.

Leonardi: Okay. I’m-a shut up.

The dialogue wraps up on page 31:

Notebook #5, page 31

Near the bottom of the page Dave is working on a font for the new logo he was coming up with at the time. Then a we a couple thumbnails for some pages from Summit Enchanted Evening.