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 have yet to take a look at the final notebook: notebook #33. Yes, I know I said there were 36 notebooks scanned. So technically this is notebook #36, but there were several labeled "albatross" in there. Notebook #33 is a blue and black covered 'Hilroy' notebook with 108 pages, only 58 of which were scanned.
18 of those pages that were scanned only have the issue number, the same style as on the covers, on the notebook page. With this notebook Dave put an issue number on every third page. The issues covered in this notebook: #266 to 300.
Usually when I scanned the notebooks, I only scanned the outside front cover and outside back cover. There wasn't anything of interest usually in the inside covers, but if there was, I'd scan it. Like in this one, Dave had an outline for Latter Days:
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| Notebook #33, inside front cover |
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| Notebook #33, page 43 |
The final page of the final notebook? Cerebus last grasp and yell for help:
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| Notebook #33, page 108 |
1 comment:
These notebooks are quite impressive for seeing the whole creative process of Mr. Sim. My notebooks just contain notes rather than page layouts or drawings.
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