Notebook One: Cerebus #24 Part Six

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening: 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

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For the last month and a week or so we’ve been looking at pages from Dave Sim’s first Cerebus notebook that show content for Cerebus #24. Though much of it up to this point was unused plot points. We’ve been seeing those unused plot points be discarded and content for the actual issue appear. That being said, we still saw a bunch of unused material with last week’s pages. 

We left off last week looking at page 100 of the notebook, where Dave wrote a list of plot points and a drawing of Cerebus, Theresa, and Katrina. Now on page 100 we see the dialogue to go along with the trio.

Notebook #1, page 101

The dialogue on this page matches up very well with the dialogue on page 2 of Cerebus #24 including Cerebus’ thought bubble that says ‘Tarim. Cerebus hates these “cute” card games.’ Though on the final page it turns into ‘There is nothing Cerebus hates more than ‘cute’ card games.’ 

The next page continues with the dialogue between the two girls and Cerebus. The dialogue on this page matches up very well with the dialogue on page 3 of the issue. If you click on the picture and look closely, you can see circled numbers starting with #2. Those numbers are for which panel on the page the dialogue is for. And those match up very well.

Notebook #1, page 102

There is some dialogue on the left side that was crossed out:

One of the girls: That’s ridiculous. What would the lion of the coast be doing with a dress. . .

Cerebus: It was the blue silk one he wore at royal receptions.

Yah, I can understand why Dave didn’t include that. 

The dialogue between the girls and Cerebus continues on the next page of the dialogue. Including Dave’s circled numbers penciled beside some of the dialogue. Though at this point the numbering doesn’t match the panel numbering for page four. But it does break the dialogue into panel sized bits.

Notebook #1, page 103

And yes, this is the dialogue that appears on page four of the issue. Including Cerebus’ story of using women for shields during a fight and completely stunning Theresa. Though Janette doesn’t show up in this conversation, as it is just Cerebus, Theresa, and Katrina.

And you can probably see something on the back of page 103. We’ll see it next week when we see even more pages from Dave’s first notebook ‘cause I’m having fun giving it away for free. We’ll see how long I can do this before boss man fires me.