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 last week's overview of all the notebook entries at AMoC, I asked for what you'd like to see. David B mentioned Dave's notes for the biblical commentary. One would think there would be tons of writing for Cerebus' biblical commentary which we saw starting with Cerebus #280 when Konigsberg arrived with the Books of Moshe. So much tiny type. Just going on and on and on.
Notebook #36 is the one notebook that covers Cerebus #280 through 287 which are the issues that Cerebus torah commentary is in. Looking through that notebook, I think there was more writing in the notebooks for Reads then there was for all that tiny type in Latter Days.
For issue #280 there are some sketches of Konigsberg and some quotes. Then there is a blank page for issue #281 (all it has is the issue # box), and then on page 49 we see the first page with some of Cerebus' torah commentary for issue #282:
 |
| Notebook #36, page 49 |
There is another blank page for issue #283, and then for all of the remaining issues in Cerebus' reading of the Torah, all we get are either empty pages or the writing is for Konigsberg's diary. I know Dave has mentioned starting to read the bible for Rick's Story. In fact, looking at the notes for Latter Days at the back of that phonebook, starting on page 491, Dave talks about getting his first copy of the 1611 King James Bible for Rick's Story. I also remember something about Dave mentioning notebooks that he used for biblical commentary. It would seem that he must've kept those separate from the Cerebus notebooks.
2 comments:
But since the Biblical commentary became part of the Cerebus storyline, shouldn't those notebooks be part of the Cerebus archive?
Post a Comment