Notebook 21: Cerebus #169 Part One

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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Last week we finished up with page 74 of Dave’s 21st notebook which looked at dialogue for Cerebus #168 pages six and seven. We’ve also looked at page 75 of the notebook previously. You can read the blog entry on it here, Jaka’s Dream. It contains the text for page 1 of Cerebus #169.  Well, the next page of the notebook contains the text for page 2 of Cerebus #169:

Notebook #21, page 76

And once again, the text in the notebook is near identical to the finished page’s text. On the next page of the notebook we get some page layouts for pages 2 and 3 of Cerebus #169, aka the Women phonebook pages #128 & 129.

Notebook #21, page 77

The circled numbers refer to page numbers, and that content matches what is on the finished pages. The layouts however, differ a bit. While page 2 does have the text on the left side and a picture on the right side, the picture of Jaka and young Jaka with Missy is a bit different. The two have swapped positions with Jaka in the front reading her story while young Jaka is facing away from the audience and sitting in the background, while she holds missy who is facing the audience.

Page 3 of Cerebus #169 has three panels, but they are both full page in length, and narrow. The first two kind of match up – Jaka waking up, close up on her, and panel two is a wider shot of her lying in bed. The next panel doesn’t match up at all. On the notebook page you see Cerebus sitting by himself with the crew to the far right. The finished panel on page 3 of Cerebus #169 is Swoon talking with Cirin on a chest board.

If you want to see the next page of the notebook, page 78, you don't need to wait until next week. We've already looked at it back in February of 2019 in Dang Snowy Storm.