Wednesday 2 May 2018

Lord Julius or Like-A-Look?

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.

In August of 2017 was when we last saw Dave Sim's notebook #18 in an article called "To an Iestan Boy?".  The notebook had 64 pages scanned and covers Cerebus #136 to 141, the end of Jaka's Story and the start of Melmoth.

In the notebook I saw a nice ballpoint ink sketch of the Grandlord of Palnu, Lord Julius himself. Or perhaps a Like-A-Look, it is hard sometimes to tell them apart unless you can spot the painted on mustache.

Notebook #18, page 29
Though the page you can see what looks like a list. That is because it is a list, a list of Melmoth issues:

Notebook #18, page 30
In the phonebook we first see Melmoth talking with Robbie about trying to locate the third part of Daughter of Palnu. I was a bit surprised at how little there is on this list for Melmoth. I know it is the smallest phonebook, but still - entire issues with nothing? I'll have to see if there is more in here.

1 comment:

JLH said...

I don't recall Melmoth having any interaction with Cerebus, let alone "realizing Cerebus used to be the Pope", as intended here.