Notebook 21: The Clueless

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.

We’re continuing our look at Dave Sim’s 21st notebook used during the creation of Cerebus #164 to 187. We’ll be looking at this notebook, which there were 260 out of 300 pages scanned, until we’ve seen every single page of it. Well, the pages scanned. If you want to see all of the notebook #21 posts to date, just use the Notebook 21 tag. 

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After a respite of looking at material from Cerebus #166 and #167, last week we saw three pages with dialogue for Spawn #10. This week? We’re back to material for Cerebus #167 and Swoon. 

On page 45 we get a large head sketch of Swoon, and some text around it. The top left corner where it has a 1 in a circle with the quote “I know things that have been forgot”, shows up on page 1 of Cerebus #167, aka page 87 of the phonebook, Women.

Notebook #21, page 45

The dialogue? We only see a small sliver of what is on this page. Dave never refers to Swoon and his “siblings” as The Endless, but The Clueless. We see a name not mentioned in the finished comic: Salivate, possibly another name for Desire. The discussion of ‘the war has ended’ was switched around to ‘it has all changed. . .The Upper City will be invaded by the Lower”. 

The next page of the notebook continues with more of the Endless Clueless.

Notebook #21, page 46

Dave is rifting on names for The Clueless again. At one point Sad, Stoned, Space Case, Sycho, and Spazzy were on the list.  We also get Dave working through some more Cockroach and Elrod dialogue. Dave even starts putting the line though the characters names like he does when Swoon is talking about them. And if you think the next page contains more on The Clueless, you’d be correct:

Notebook #21, page 47

About halfway down the page, Dave switched from the war has ended to the ‘it has all changed now’ dialogue which we see on page 8 of Cerebus #167 (page 94 of Women). On the next page of the notebook we get some sketches of Swoon and Snuff:

Notebook #21, page 48

The top sketch shows up on page 8 of Cerebus #167. We do not see Snuff pointing at Swoon like is shown on the notebook page, but we do get plenty of Swoon hunched over. The dialogue shows up on pages 8 to 9, except we don’t see the last of Elrod’s quip “relatives that is”.