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 we saw an overview of Dave Sim’s first Cerebus notebook and pages 2 and 3. Those two pages had a discussion about the followers and priestesses of Terim from Cirin’s book, The New Matriarchy. So today we’ll be looking at pages 4 and 5.
Page 4 continues with the material for Cerebus #20. The column on the left is Cerebus talking with an Illusionist who doesn’t “believe in a god – male or female”. Cerebus asks the Illusionist what they believe in and their responses is ‘Drugs, parties, killing political leaders’. Cerebus asks ‘Which ones.’ And the response: “ones who are against drugs and parties.”
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Notebook #1, page 4 |
The column on the right side is the Cirinist and Cerebus text. Though it doesn’t sound too much like the Cirinists I’m familiar with as they say this “No No! We’re anti-authority. If were to take over governing this country, we’d be obliged by our oaths to kill each other.”
On page six we say Dave playing around with the page layouts for pages 6 through 7. Kind of. At least that is what it looks like – who will be speaking when / where on the page. There is also a lot more on the Cirinists – what they believe, names, and some dialogue for them.
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| Notebook #1, page 5 |
The bit on the bottom left of the page is some foreshadowing of Cerebus’ hermaphrodite nature:
The scriptures tell us that we are to examine each. . .how shall I put it? Anomalous being? That crosses our path. . .the new matriarchy proposed by Cirin requires a distinctive separation of male and female.
Page six continues the material for Cerebus #20:
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| Notebook #1, page 6 |
The top of the page is some writing from Innec Starym’s My Months as Palnu’s Grandlord. The bottom is some more dialogue with the Cirinists, Illusionists, and Cerebus.
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