Cerebus' First Job

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.

In November of 2018 we saw a page from Dave Sim's fourth Cerebus notebook in Three Days at the Regency. The notebook covered Cerebus #41 through 44, it had 99 out of 108 pages scanned. However, it also covered some other Cerebus items also. Such as this page for "Cerebus' First Job"

Notebook #4, page 80

Well. . .it may have been Cerebus' first job, but the story was named "A Friendly Reminder" and it was first printed in Epic Illustrated #28 in February 1985. Cerebus #41 through 44 have cover dates of August 1982 to November 1982.

Fast forward to Dave's seventh notebook, which covered issues 59 through 70, and there were two pages that showed page layouts and dialogue for A Friendly Reminder. We covered those in December of 2017 in A Friendly Reminder.

Cerebus #59 was covered dated February 1984 and #70 was dated January 1985.