MARGARET LISS:
We just saw a page from Dave Sim’s first notebook this past April in First Look at Astoria. The notebook covers #20 through 28 – yes, it was the first notebook and started so late, as Dave used loose sheets of paper before this notebook – and had 194 pages scanned out of 200 pages. One of the pages that stood out to me as I was looking through them was page 172.
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| Notebook #1, page 172 |
It is just a wall of text with mark-ups. But it appears in Cerebus #27. This notebook page is Dave telling us why we are getting this wall of text, and then going into the rules of Diamondback.
About this notebook page Dave said: “Sometimes I would let the over-plotting go, as the design of the Diamondback game and its rules. Basically anticipating that the continuity junkies would want to know the rules at some point so I needed to have them all made up in advance. It was the first use of solid text in Cerebus which would prove controversial. But the continuity junkies needed to be served as well.”
The next page of the notebook gives the game rules.
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| Notebook #1, page 173 |
When I originally read it, I was probably thankful, as a continuity junkie, for the detail. Having played the game, I wish he hadn’t written them down.
The page that this wall of "solid text" appears on is Cerebus #27 page 11, aka High Society page 39.
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| Cerebus #27, page 11 |
1 comment:
I've always preferred "Gimpsee Doodle." "Fizzbin" is even better.
On a less frivolous note, though, one of the first things that struck me about Cerebus when I first discovered it (right in the middle of the "High Society" storyline) was how thoroughly thought out it all was. It was apparent, even then, how much action was taking place "off page" and that Dave had it all planned out, in great detail. "This is not a slapdash job" is how I put it in one of my first "Aardvark Comment" letters. Having the rules of Diamondback all worked out is just one (rather trivial) example of this.
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