Cerebus #50 Cover Sketches

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 fourth Cerebus notebook had 99 pages out of 108 scanned, and it covers Cerebus #41 through 44. Kind of. On page 21 I found an outline for High Society and sketches for the cover to #50:

Notebook #4, page 21

Cerebus #39 was called ‘Petuniacon Day Three’, not ‘The Ambassador Suite’.

Cerebus #43 was called ‘Election Night’ not ‘The Election’, the word crossed out is Day.

The rest of them are spot on.

Dave said this about the sketches on this page: “I thought this was a very strong design and execution for the end of High Society. It took a while to figure out how many ‘panels’ I could fit in and the relative sizes of the Cerebi, but it looks as if it didn’t. Which is good.”