Planning Issue #43

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 April of 2020 we last saw pages from Dave Sim’s fourth Cerebus notebook, in Issue 41 Page by Page. The fourth notebook had 108 pages of which 99 were scanned and it covered Cerebus #41 through 44.

On page 35 we see an outline for issue #43, but umm, last time I checked, there weren’t 68 pages in an issue of Cerebus.

Notebook #4, page 35

So was Dave listing out the next couple of issues? Nope, this is what he said about page #43: “Total number of panels in No. 43 written out in two columns…”

The next page is a continuation of the list of panels, from #69 to 136. Dave says about page #36: “I did try to write No 43 backwards from the cliffhanger. The reasons I had to finish both No. 43 and 44 before we left so I had to do two issues simultaneously.”

Notebook #4, page 36

At one-point Dave said he was preparing to “be five weeks away from the drawing board without going off the monthly schedule”. Cerebus #43 had a cover date of October 1982 and #44 was November 1982. Well, during Oct 1st to Nov 7th, Dave and Deni would be on the “First American Tour 1982”.