Talking Back To Your Television

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.

Notebook #16 was just seen last month, in Drinking at Dinner Time. Covering Cerebus #122 through 125 it had 67 pages scanned.

On page 11 of the notebook, it looks like Dave did an outline for Cerebus #123? Though this outline has mini-pages with nothing really in them, just pages numbers above them and a name of the character.

Notebook #16, page 11

However, looking at page 10 of Cerebus #123, the characters don't match up. Jaka and the door do show up on page 9 of the issue, but after that it doesn't match.

Perhaps Matt can ask Dave in his next telephone chat what Dave was laying out here then. . .

Oh, and Wayne Gretzky, the great one, was traded from the Edmonton Oilers to the LA Kings in 1988 after the Oilers won the Stanley Cup. Issue #123 is dated June 1989. Still on Dave's mind many months later. Though to me don't know if Dave was more concerned with Gretzky's NHL future (he never won another cup, though he did set a ton of records that will probably never be broken) or with the similarity with Dave never selling out to one of the big two.