Seemingly Lead a Charmed Life

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 seen Dave Sim's notebook #30 once before here at AMoC in November 2014: Minds Rehearsal. Notebook #30 is just that, what Dave would say to Cerebus in the Minds phonebook. The notebook is the smallest notebook at 5" x 3" and only had 73 pages scanned in and 25 missing pages.

I scanned this notebook in two pages at a time as it was so tiny. So the front inside cover was scanned in along with page one:

Notebook 30, page 1

Notebook 30 pages 2 & 3

Notebook 30 pages 4 & 5

The only bit used from those first five pages was a paraphrasing of "I am your creator, but I'm not your god" on page 127 of Minds (issue #193, page 1):

Minds, page 127