Notebook 21: Cerebus #174 page 4

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 saw pages from the notebook which covered material in Cerebus #174. Where . . .or ‘when’. . .are we this week? 

Notebook #21, page 98

It looks like we are in July of 1993. Cerebus #174 as shown at the top of the page does indeed have the month of September on it. Typically, with these ‘calendars’ Dave would put a short note – one or two words – of what he wanted to get done that day. Most of the time it was something like a page number(s), cover, letters, etc. On this calendar all we can see is that the week of July 15 – 20 must’ve been for non-work-related tasks. Perhaps a vacation?

The next page has another page rough down the bottom with the number four in the bottom left corner:

Notebook #21, page 99

Is that page four from Cerebus #174? Kind of. If you turn to page 229 in the phonebook Women, or page 3 of Cerebus #174 you’ll see that first panel down the bottom of that page.  The second panel from the notebook’s page rough, the panel with the ‘poit!’ sound effect is on page 4 of Cerebus #174. That is the one panel from the notebook’s page rough that appears on page 4. The other three panels in this rough kind of appear in slightly different forms in the issue. For example, we don’t see that same layout of Cerebus flying over the upper city, but we do see a similar panel on page 232 of the phonebook Women (page 6 of Cerebus #174). It would appear that when compared to the finished page, Dave took this rough of Cerebus' journey to the throne room and interspersed Astoria' journey.

As for the text in the top right corner of the notebook page? I don’t recall where that was used, and I don’t see it in Cerebus #174. 

And as I know what is coming up on the next page (pst: Cerebus #175 stuff) we’ll call it day here.