Page 16 of Cerebus #174

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.

Last week in Page 20 of Cerebus #174 we saw page #110 of Dave Sim’s 21st notebook, which covers Cerebus #164 through 187. Pages 102 through 110 of Dave’s notebook have sketches of pages from Cerebus #174. The one page in that selection which we haven’t looked at yet is page 106:

Notebook #21, page 106

And that sketch in the notebook of page 16 from Cerebus #174 looks pretty dang close to the finished page. The dialogue is there – just above / below the panels. Missing Gerhard’s backgrounds, yes, but only a few other slight changes. Like Po’s dialogue balloons do not have the “tail” on them and how Po in the fourth panel is lower so that his robe goes under the bottom panel. 

Cerebus #174, page 16 (aka Women page 242)

But Dave put hard lines around the panels that have the panel borders around them on the finished page. I also like how Gerhard put the background from panel two around the top of the first panel.