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 looked at Dave Sim's notebook #9 in Sketches of Familiar Faces in February of 2017. It covers issues Cerebus #80 through 86 and had 118 out of 200 pages scanned. While we've seen This notebook seven times, we've never seen the cover for it.
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| Notebook #9, front cover |
Looking through the pages, I saw a block of text on page 126. It looks like it was meant to be a Note From The President, but it isn't posted to my site and I don't remember it right off hand. I'd dig through some issues, but I don't have the time. . .
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| Notebook #9, page 126 |
2 comments:
Interesting to see 'going home' mentioned a LONG time before the title or storyline was even remotely imagined. Comic Art Metaphysics at work for sure!
Dave mentioned in a couple of different places that he'd occasionally scribble a "You want to know what it's like to be Dave Sim? Huh?" missive that he inevitably decided not to publish in the cold light of day. Perhaps this is something like that -- an attempt to articulate to himself where he is and to anticipate the challenges coming his way.
I've said before that I think Dave's greatest legacy will be not Cerebus the work itself, but the proof that creators can tell exactly the story they want, to the best of their ability, with "total control over everything."
-- Damian
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