Layouts for Page #11 of Cerebus #114

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 Dave Sim’s 13th notebook, which covers Cerebus #112/113, this past February in Sketches of Young Jaka, where we saw the notebook also had some pages that covered Cerebus #114. Back in August of 2021 we saw page 82 of the notebook that has the layout of page 9 from Cerebus #114.

Well, the next page of the notebook doesn’t cover the next page of Cerebus #114, but of the art that stretches across page 16 & 17, aka Jaka’s Story page 26 & 27.  You can see on both sides of the sketch where Dave put lines for where the two long text boxes would be – the one on the far left is a an actual box and the one on the right is just a line.

Notebook #13, page 83

Cerebus #114, page 16 & 17 artwork

Gerhard’s backgrounds at once change a little bit about the sketch Dave did, and still kept the core aspects: Jaka on Magic with the sun behind her while Missy, leaning against something, watches Jaka, with Nurse sitting on the bench behind them both. 

Lower on the page is the layout for page 11. The actual page has the same six panel layout, with almost the text – Jaka’s dialogue in the last panel, “If you don’t want it’, isn’t in the finished page, and Rick’s dialogue on that panel is slightly different. But for a quick sketch, pretty similar to the finished page.

Cerebus #114, page 11

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