Wednesday 9 March 2016

Reprinting Cerebus Every Two Weeks

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 looked at Dave Sim's notebook #11 twice before. Once in the beginning of 2015 in "A Gold Coin?" and once near the end of 2015 in "Jaka and Missy". It covers Cerebus #113 through 117. Issue #117 of Cerebus has a cover date of December 1988, which is also the cover date of the first Cerebus Bi-Weekly issue.

Cerebus Bi-Weekly (1988-1992)
Art by Dave Sim
On page 60 of notebook #11 we see Dave's notes for the Cerebus Bi-Weekly series:

Notebook #11, page 60
While the notebook was supposed to be issues #113 to 117, the top of page 60 has  dialogue for issue #118 pages 2 and 3 or in the phonebook, pages 92 & 93. Then we see the outline for the Cerebus Bi-Weekly series down the bottom of the page, getting a page count for the issues.

On page 61 we see a thumbnail of the front inside cover, along with the text that would accompany it. We also see another page count for the series.

Notebook #11, page 61
It looks like the page count goes from 34 to 32, with Dave reducing the intro from 3 to 2 pages and getting rid of the Beavers strip.

6 comments:

Jeff Seiler said...

Other than bi-monthlies 1, 2, and 3 and issue 14, some of the bi-weeklies are the only ones I need. I'm sure Margaret or Nate would be willing eventually to sell me 1, 2, 3, and 14 (right? :)), but I wanna know to get the free copies of the bi-weeklies I need...

Sandeep?

Steve said...


Jeff -

If they can't help, I'm sure My Comic Shop (mycomicshop on eBay) has them all for a bit over $1 each.

Steve

iestyn said...

for some reason - I actually prefer the bi-weekly covers.

couldn't tell you why

Sandeep Atwal said...

There are lots and lots and LOTS of copies of Cerebus Bi-Weekly, High Society Bi-Weekly and Church and State Bi-Weekly at the warehouse in Kitchener. If you want some, you can either a) Come to the Kitchener ComicCon on April 2nd, Kitchener City Hall, or wait until we (FINALLY) launch the Cerebus Giveaway at Wes Hagan's Warehouse of Wonders. We've been bagging and boarding comics for a few weeks now, and recently set aside copies for Dave and Wes and got 10,000 certificates and 10,000 seals. So we're just waiting on 10,000 bags and boards which was supposed to be last week. Anyway, we'll be putting in a week of bagging and boarding and then will have MANY comics for Wes, including, as I say, lots of the Bi-Weekly comics!

iestyn said...

unfortunately, I'm UK based, and I can't justify THAT cost for some comics!!

al roney said...

As someone who came on-board the Cerebus train at issue 112/113 these Bi-weeklies were a godsend!

Ah, the days of reading Cerebus backward and forward at the same time...fun times.