Thursday 23 March 2017

Wuffa Wuffa

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've only looked at Albatross #4, Dave Sim's fourth notebook used during the production of Cerebus, once before back in August of 2016 in Albatross Four. Looking through it again, I saw a sketch for the cover to Cerebus #44 which wasn't shown in the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury book.

Cerebus #44, the Wuffa Wuffa issue, is when Cerebus, Astoria and the Roach head up to Northbell in the snow. So the cover that was used shows a bit of Cerebus in the snow:

Cerebus #44 cover
The  cover sketch on page 59 of Albatross Four shows the sled that they used to get to Northbell:

Albatross Four, page 59
The page also features some quotes, which appear to be from Lord Storm'send. The one that made me chuckle: "If'n I thought about Tarim as much Lord Julius thinks about money, I could be a high priest by now. . .".

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks, Margaret! It was a good line -- as were the rest of the lines I had written here -- but it really undercut the Farmer Guy's anti-voting/anti-government personality. It seems unlikely that he would even know who Lord Julius WAS -- that is, SCRUPULOUSLY not know! -- let alone have formed an opinion about him, let alone have formed an opinion about his spending habits and attitudes towards money. One of those instances where I kept writing, thinking "the right gag is around here somewhere" and the mental static just needed to be bypassed.

And then finding out, no, the mental static is from the way the premise violates the character. D'OH!