I Want To See Your Armpit

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.

A quick one this week. With the New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl I've been watching the interception again and again. And again. Sports are like a drug, the lows (how the heck did he catch that? Not again. Nooooooo.) to the highs (interception! We won! OHMYGAWD! WE WON!). And I just can't give it up yet. So between that on Sunday and the parade tomorrow (yes, I'm going), that doesn't leave much time to write this. So I picked some bits from one of my favorite phonebooks.

Reads.

Yes, Reads is in my top 3 phonebooks. The material. The structure. The grand meeting of all three Aardvarks. The fight. It has everything. Notebook #18 covers issues #164 to 187, and on page 118, Dave gives us a rough layout of the structure of Reads:

Notebook #18 page 118

Then on pages 163 and 164 are the only roughs I can see for the epic battle between Cirin and Cerebus:

Notebook #18 page 163

Notebook #18 page 164