Thumbnails for Cerebus #99 Part 4

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’re continuing on with more of Dave Sim’s eleventh Cerebus notebook as it does contain some great thumbnails for Cerebus #99. Last week we looked at page #76 and 77, so I thought this week we’d look at page 78. But nope, no page 78, we skip to page 79. That is because I didn’t scan in page 78 as it was blank. If something had gone through to the next side I’d scan that in, but nope. Blank.

So how about page 79?

Same as the last couple of weeks, it is thumbnails for Cerebus #99. Last week on page 77 we saw the thumbnails for pages 14 and 15. So on page 79 are the thumbnails for pages 16 and 17:

Notebook #11, page 79

The thumbnails look pretty close to the finished pages:

Cerebus #99 pages 16 & 17, aka Church & State II pages 972 & 973

Same number of panels with the same characters. The poses are a bit different, but the same message from each of them. Though Dave did add some text to the finished page that wasn’t on the thumbnails. And looking at Dave’s thumbnail we have no idea what the background would be so we can see Gerhard’s finished throne room from the days of Po and Great Andrena.