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.
It has been a while since we’ve last seen a page from Dave Sim’s 24th notebook used in the production of Cerebus: December of 2020 with Cerebus is a Terrible Person. The 24th notebook covers Cerebus #192 through 211 and had 138 out of 200 scanned in.
Page 47 of the notebook caught my eye as it looked like Dave had quickly sketched some landscape panels. Some ducks? Geese? On water, and then taking flight over the water, and the final panel are those same birds flying over a cornfield with a fence in the foreground. Looks like a single page at quick glance.
But Dave put some letters and numbers around this sketch. Up at the top left corner we can see this artwork is for Cerebus #206. The first panel has IFC for inside front cover above it, the next panel is page 1, and the final third panel is pages 2 and 3.
 |
| Notebook 24, page 47 |
So how did Gerhard take these rough sketches and turn it into 4 pages? Or 3 and a half as the case may be with panel one being the inside front cover? For that one sketch in the notebook turned into the inside front cover and pages one through three, aka Guys pages 113 through 117.
 |
| Cerebus #206, inside front cover to page 3 |
Gerhard took the concept of showing us the landscape via the travel of the geese, but instead of just some water and corn fields, we get the Wall of T'Si and the tavern.
2 comments:
Dave always struggled to define Gerhard's role since everyone was calling him either an inker or just a background artist. That there is Comics. A unique art form, and in this case, very well done.
When I was a kid, every once in a while a Marvel story would have one guy credited for "Layouts" and another for "Finished Art." I guess we have here a vivid example of what that means...!
Post a Comment