Dave's To Do List

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 last saw a few pages from Dave Sim’s seventh notebook used in the production of Cerebus just this past January in Mind Game IV. It covers Cerebus #59 through 69 and some other things that were going on at the time. Like all these items shown on page 18.

Notebook #7, page 18

Up at the top we get a list of things that Dave must’ve had on his to-do list:

• Record album cover
• Portfolio Plates
• Story with Ger
• Petunia Artwork
• Designs for Ger to do
• Ad supplement 
• Aardvark Update
• Newsletter Cover (Petuniacon)
• Notebooks section

That is quite the list. The record album cover has to be a reference to the unreleased Radio Show LP:

Cerebus: The Radio Show album art from the back cover of Cerebus the Newsletter #10

While the LP was never released, you can go to Jeff’s Cerebus The Aardvark website’s AV Room page, scroll down to see ‘Audio’ and viola, all the MP3s of the audio version of the first 6 issues.

Portfolio plates. . .is that the Animated Cerebus plates or the First Fifth plates? Well, since the Animated Cerebus portfolio came out in 1983 and was in notebook #4, this reference must be for the First Fifth portfolio.

The story with Ger has got to be a reference to the Epic story “His First Fifth” which was Gerhard’s first collaboration with Dave on a Cerebus story. 

Petunia artwork? Yes, Dave did the artwork not only for the PetuniaCon program booklet, but the badges, and other items. See this page on Brian’s old site (I don’t seem them on his Comic Art Fans site, which has mouth watering large amount of cool Cerebus, Dave Sim, and Gerhard work – take a look, but have a free hour ‘cause it’ll take you a while to get through all the goodies).

As for the newsletter cover (PetuniaCon)? There wasn’t a newsletter that had a specific cover for just PetuniaCon. . .the notebooks section goes along with the newsletter. Since AV was publishing the newsletter at this point, they printed  some notebook pages in them.

The bottom half of the page deals with Cerebus comic book stuff – well, other than that Cerebus The Newsletter inside front cover design – but I’m not sure what issue, or if it was used, as it isn’t ringing any bells. The lines:

“Cerebus doesn’t want to have a good time. Cerebus wants to stay here with you. . .” sounds like something he’d say to the Countess. However,  she didn’t appear in issues #59 through 69 which is what this notebook (supposedly) covers.  However, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve found items meant for other issues in a notebook labeled as something else.

If anyone knows where that dialogue is from, let us know in the comments.