More Detail About Dave's Notebooks

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.

Over at that Facebooks Cerebus group Lenny had a few questions, and opened them with this statement: “3281 (pages) in 36 notebooks (91 pages/notebook) for 281 issues (20-300) (12 pages/issue).”

While the average is 91 pages per issue, it doesn't quite work out like that. . .Looking at the spreadsheet I have, some notebooks cover only one issue, some cover an arc of issues - notebooks #23 - 'Mothers & Daughters', #30 - Minds Rehearsal, and #35 ‘Spore & Konigsberg’. Some notebooks only cover one issue: #10 – Cerebus #112/113 (yes, I count it as one issue since it is together, same with 289 / 290), #24 – Cerebus #225, #25 – Cerebus #227, #29 – Cerebus #255, #30 – Cerebus #251, and #34 – Cerebus #289/290.

List of Dave Sim's Cerebus Notebooks

Just doing the math of how many pages per notebook were scanned, and the number of issues covered in that notebook, on average each issue Cerebus had 18.36 pages of notebook “time”.  I never sat down and indexed each page to an issue. . .or to something else. . .though I am kind of doing that in these weekly posts.

Lenny then asked: “Are each of the notebook pages dedicated to particular issues? Or are some of them more general notes or musings on the entire series?”

Each page of the notebook isn’t dedicated to a particular issue. There are pages that cover a couple of issues. There are pages that don’t cover any one issue. For example, there are pages with Dave’s notes on a speech, tour logistics, Spawn #10, or sketches of other tourists on vacation.

Lenny’s questions continue: “You scanned 47/80 pages (59%) of Melmoth.”

Yeah, yeah. Not really a question, but I didn’t scan 59% of Melmoth, I scanned 47 pages out of 80 pages that make up notebook #19 which covers Cerebus #141 though 149. Part of Melmoth, not all of it. I said out of 80 pages because that is what the notebook started with according to the cover.

Lenny continues: “How much of the 3281 pages did you scan? How did you decide what to scan? Do you plan to one day scan the rest?”

I scanned all 3,281 pages. The notebooks however had over 4,506 pages. I don’t know how many pages were in notebook #6 as it was missing the cover when I got it. So, I just put in 158 pages that were scanned. Many notebooks had missing pages, and many had blank pages – so I went by the number of pages the cover stated it had for that over number of 4,506 pages.

I scanned all the pages that had something on them. Other than the lines of the notebook. If some ink bled through to the other side, I scanned it. If Dave had taped a copied cover of an issue to the page, I scanned it.  If Dave had taped something over something else on the notebook page, I scanned the page twice. The only time I didn’t scan a page is if it was blank. I didn’t scan blank pages as I was in a hurry to scan the notebooks and get them back to Dave. I was afraid something might happen to them while they were in my possession.

Would I go back and scan the blank pages? Nah. Would I go back and get a better inventory of what blank pages were in each notebook and a count of missing pages? Sure.

Lenny wraps it up with: “And of the pages you scanned, how many have you already posted to AMOC? Are then scanned pages posted anywhere else?”

Of the 3,218 pages I scanned, I’ve posted 694 pages, and all the covers, from the 36 notebooks. So though 408 posts to AMOC I’ve shared about 21% of the notebook pages I’ve scanned. I started these posts in June of 2014. I posted a couple of notebook pages to my old CFG forum, but since then, those pages have been posted to AMOC.

Covers to 35 Notebooks & One Coverless Notebook