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 last looked at Dave Sim's notebook #6 back in January of this year in
Sketching the Countess. The notebook book covers Cerebus #52 through #59. Though I did find bits of #51 now that I'm looking more closely to the pages.
Look at this close up of page 7 from the notebook, which lies between notes for issue #52, which has the Elfquest story, and see the thumbnails for pages #17 through 19 for issue #51:
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| Notebook #6, page 7 close-up, click for close-up |
Looks pretty close to the final pages, including the sound effect lettering:
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| Cerebus #51, pages 17 - 19 |
The rest of the notebook page has the text for those pages, matches pretty close the dialogue on the finish pages:
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| Notebook #6, page 7 |
The one noticeable change I see is on page 17, going from 'bureaucrat pudding' to 'bureaucrat stew'. Neither sounds tasty to me.
