Suck Wet Farts Out of Dead Pigeons

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 saw pages from Dave Sim’s seventh notebook in Dave’s To Do List posted in April of 2021. The notebook covers material from Cerebus #59 through 69 and had 160 out of 200 pages scanned.

I saw this busy page and was surprised it hadn’t “made the cut” yet to be showcased. Page 143 has some thumbnails of pages from Cerebus #69, some dialogue, and sketches of BooBah.

Notebook #7, page 143

So the three thumbnails at the top of the page are indeed for Cerebus #69 pages 6, 7, and 8:

Church & State I, page 358 – 360 (click for larger image)

The thumbnail layouts match the final pages – well, other than missing Gerhard’s incredible background. The one different I can see is on page 8 we don’t see Weisshaupt’s eyes glaring at us. 

Halfway down the page we see a panel thumbnail that is the third panel on page 6. So we see the super rough sketch at the top, and then the little more detailed with dialogue sketch, and then the final panel. And yes, the dialogue does match up to the finish page.

We see the dialogue that the two guys who jump off the top of the hotel say. Including one of the insults I like to occasionally use: “The President sucks wet farts out of dead pigeons.”