Items for Cerebus #153

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 twentieth notebook covers Cerebus #153  to 164 and it had only 59 pages scanned in. The last time we saw pages from it was back in June of 2021 in Lord Julius Banter from Cerebus #164. While we’ve looked at this notebook thirteen times so far, we’ve never seen page one.

So page one opens up with some layouts and dialogue for page two of Cerebus #153, aka Flight page 48.

Notebook #20, page 1

It is close to the finished page – with the ‘Hail Cerebus!’, the long vertical panels alternating between Cerebus climbing and the Cirinists below, the diamond dialogue boxes , and Cerebus tossing his sword up on a ledge as he climbs upwards with Missy.

On the next page is a list of things to appear in the phonebook. Part of the text in the lower half of the page is from Cerebus’ speech to the citizens of Iest, though parts of it weren’t used.

 Notebook #20, page 2

The next page continues Cerebus’ speech, but not all of it is used.

Notebook #20, page 3