Good Luck - W.

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.

We last looked at Dave Sim’s tenth notebook in June of 2021 in Pages 8 & 9 from Cerebus #93. The notebook had 115 pages scanned and covers Cerebus #87 through 95. Way back in February of 2018 we saw page 20 of this notebook in Astoria! GO AWAY!

That page had thumbnails of Cerebus #88 pages 8 and 9. Well, guess what page 21 of the notebook has? If you guessed thumbnails of Cerebus #88 pages 10 and 11, you’d be 2/3rds correct. Page 22 also has a thumbnail of page 12 as well.

Notebook #10, page 21

The thumbnails all match up very well to the finished pages – well, minus Gerhard’s backgrounds of course. Page 10 panel 6 just blows my mind – from that little thumbnail, which looks like Cerebus going towards something round up on a roof. Then go to the panel with Gerhard’s background and then you can see Cerebus opening the door to the roof, the cannon, all the people in the courtyard, and Thrunk’s shadow on some of them.  

Cerebus #88, page 10 & 11 (aka Church & State II page 744 & 745)

We also get some of the dialogue, not all of it, but Dave does have the word balloons in the same spots as the finished pages. Also note that on the page 11 thumbnail, while there are 6 long vertical panels, panel #5 has a split down below the word balloon making that page actually have 7 panels. And on the finished page 11, it also has the same thin sliced panel, which is just Thrunk going from his rant to ‘uh’ as he notices Cerebus on the roof.

Page 12 matches up very well, Thrunk noticing Cerebus and Cerebus trying to (skrtchskrtchskrtch) light the match. 

Cerebus #88, page 12 (aka Church & State II page 746)