Turning South to the River

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.

Dave Sim's twenty-fifth notebook was last seen in July of 2018 in Drink a Gallon Jug of Soda Water. The notebook covers Cerebus #213 through 241 with only 96 pages scanned.

Looking through it, I could see some issue numbers on page 62:

Notebook 25, page 62

It looks like a chapter outline, and how many issues for the F. Stop and Ham character arcs, and for each book. That got moved a bit, as the first book last until 250 instead of 248, and F. Stop appeared in 11 issues, not 8.5, and Ham appeared in 9 issues, not 8.5 (only including the Going Home and Form & Void phonebooks). The Like-A-Look does show up in issue #233.

The next page has more of a break down, and bit more detail on how the issues would go:

Notebook 25, page 63