Mrs Snatcher

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.

So here we are again. Another look at Dave Sim’s seventh notebook used in the production of Cerebus. We’ve been looking at this same notebook for months. Really. Since like the start of September. For eleven entries. And while it has been interesting and fun, we aren’t looking at Dave’s seventh notebook. This time. It is time to look at notebook #17, which covers Cerebus #127 through 135 and only had seventy-two pages scanned. The last time we saw any pages of notebook #7 was way back in February of 2021 in Jaka Finds Fred’s Note.

A couple of the 72 pages of notebook #17 had sketches of Mrs Snatcher without her mask. Kind of.

Notebook #17, page 15

I thought the 128 with a five underneath of it refereed to Cerebus #128 page 5, or page 297 of Jaka’s Story. If it does, there is nothing on this page that goes along with it. . .

The interesting thing about that page, is you can see something underneath it? Kind of? Well, flip it to the other side and you can see Mrs Snatcher with her mask on, and kind of see her face under it, from the other side.

Notebook #17, page 16