Thursday 23 March 2023

Thumbnails for Cerebus #99 Part 2

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 last week in Thumbnails for Cerebus #99 we saw a page from Dave Sim’s eleventh notebook that had thumbnails and dialogue for pages 6 and 7 from Cerebus #99. Today we’ll skip forward from page 69 to page 75 which has two more thumbnails. 

Though this page is best seen in landscape mode:

Notebook #11, page 75

Yes, you can click to enlarge the page. That way you see the pencils under Dave’s inks. As you can see along the top of the page, these thumbnails are indeed for Cerebus #99 pages 12 and 13. The thumbnails are close to the final page, but a few details are different. 

The first thing that jumps out is there is no background. And what Dave did sketch out, the throne, is different on the finished page. Some of the poses of the characters are different, but the panel layout and word balloons is the same. 

The last bits of dialogue mostly from the Great Andrena character, are different. Dave also changed the outfit the Po character wears.

Cerebus #99, pages 12 and 13 (aka Church & State II pages 968 & 969



1 comment:

Birdsong said...

I was about 4 issues in at this point and wondering what it was I had started reading. It was like jumping into the middle of a very serious soap opera from another planet. I loved it from the start - I found my thing - I never looked back.