Cerebus #43 Sketches and Dialogue

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.

Last week we looked at page 21 of Dave Sim’s fourth Cerebus notebook, which had 99 pages out of 108 scanned, and it covers Cerebus #41 through 44.  On page 71 of the notebook there is an issue box number 43 and a story title “The Day After Election Day”. However, Cerebus #43 wasn’t called that, but “Election Night”. 

Notebook #4, page 71

Dave said this about the issue’s original title “The story was originally called ‘The Day After Election Day’ taking into account the length of time for election results to arrive and the tabulated in a pre-electronic media civilization. It just didn’t ring true: it would probably have taken a week or more. ‘The Week After Election Day’ had even less immediacy to it, so I sketched a point until it broke: ‘Election Night’ and somehow all of the results were tabulated in a few hours.”

The Suenteus Po dialogue at the top of the page wasn’t used. Some of the other dialogue was. The rough sketches of the hall during the tabulation of the results are pretty closed to some of the panels in Cerebus #43.