Thursday 6 January 2022

Dave Sim's Notebooks: Seven Years

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.

Another year is over. I think. I'm still stuck thinking it is March 13, 2020. The little sidebar says there have been 384 posts tagged with 'Dave Sim's Notebooks". Doing some math, that is just a bit over 7 years. Really? Yup. The first post is the first for notebook #1 below "Hunters & Gathers" which is dated June of 2014. Yoinks. 

If there is something that you'd like to see that I somehow haven't covered yet, just let me know in the comments.

2 comments:

cognitive dissident said...

Thank you so much for all of your work on this project: scanning notebooks, doing research, writing commentary, posting all of it for us to read...it's an invaluable resource for Cerebus fans, and is very much appreciated.

Am I the only one who thinks that a digital "Collected Notebooks" collection would be a spectacular add-on for an upcoming Cerebus Archive on Kickstarter? (Or even as a standalone fundraiser?)

With gratitude,

Steve said...


So let's assume ( for the sake of making the math easy...) 2.5 scans per posting.

384 posts X 2.5 pages = 960 pages posted.

3281 scans - 960 scans posted = 2321 scans left to post.

2321 scans left / 2.5 scans per post = 928 more posts.

Average number of Notebook posts per year is 55, which means we can look forward to 16 more years of Notebook posts.

I wonder if it'll last longer than all those CIH? titles............

Steve