Even More In 1984 or When He Was 27

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 notebook #4 covers Cerebus #59 to 70 and with 160 scanned pages, there is plenty of things to cover. We last looked at in last July in A Plan for Church & State I. Instead of looking at Dave's plan for C&S I, we'll be seeing all of his plans for Aardvark-Vanaheim in August 1984.

On page 106 we see a list of comics that Dave is working on. It is quite the list. We also see a list of Aardvark-Vanaheim comics for 1985. A cover sketch for Cerebus "Jam" (or perhaps it was that advertisement that showed up with an actual picture of a small thing of Jam. I can't find it right now. First person to find it, take a picture of it and link to it in the comments will get a Cerebus #0 from me) plus a logo for the same.

Notebook #4, page 106

August looks like it was quite the busy time - working on Cerebus #66 which had a cover date of September 1984. Three pages a day? Yoinks. . .And yes, August 18 and 19 were the weekend, so only one page each on those days. August 25  and 26 were also the weekend, but this time, no pages were scheduled as Cerebus #66  was done in eight days. Not including the day for the cover and the day for the letters page. A full comic in less than two weeks. Oh to be young. . .

On the next page we see an updated calendar for August 1984. The schedule hasn't changed much - with just the Swords intros being removed from August 22 and the rest of the schedule  moved up by one day.

Notebook #4, page 107

We also see that on August 29 Murphy Anderson was replaced with "Gerhard 1,2". Murphy was bumped up to the weekend that was previously crossed off, August 25 and 26. And while the 31st wasn't a weekend, it had been previously crossed off. Instead we see more pages on that day.

Busy indeed.