Notebook 21: Cerebus #180 & Cirin’s Left Armpit

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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A bunch of revelations from Astoria which were left out of Reads but were in Dave’s 21st notebook was what we looked at last week. Not quite a wall of text, but close. So when I flipped the page and saw what we have up next, I’m surprised I hadn’t shown these pages before:

Notebook 21st, page 163

The circled numbers are the page numbers. So these are some preliminary layouts for Cerebus #180 pages 4 through 6 (click on any of the pictures to see them bigger):

Cerebus #180, pages 4 – 6

Page six is a bit different then the final pages, but pages four and five are pretty close. The next page of the notebook has another circled 6, another try at the layout for the page, but now it looks closer to page 7 of Cerebus #180, but it also has Cirin craking Cerebus when he does go to look at her arm pit:

Notebook 21st, page 164

Cerebus #180, pages 7 – 8