Thumbnails for Cerebus #99 Part 6 - The Finale

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.

For the last few weeks we’ve seen pages from Dave Sim’s eleventh Cerebus notebook that have page thumbnails for Cerebus #99. We saw thumbnails for pages 6 & 7 (notebook page 69), pages 12 & 13 (notebook page 75), pages 14 & 15 (notebook page 77), pages 16 & 17 (notebook page 79), and pages 18 & 19 (notebook page 81).

So here it is, the final thumbnail for Cerebus #99, page 20:

Notebook #11, page 83

This page is quite a bit different than the finished page. About the only thing that remains the same are the three characters appearing in individual panels:

Cerebus #99 page 20, aka Church & State II page 976

Even the dialogue is different as is the ‘Next: Verdict’. 

Makes me wonder if he would sit down and do all of these page thumbnails at once. . .hey, Boss Man. Perhaps that is a question for next month’s Please Hold.

And if you’re wondering what all the writing is on the next page of the notebook:

Notebook #11, page 84

All of that writing is an outline for Cerebus #100, which includes the big reveal: Cirin is an Aardvark.