Notebook One: Cerebus #21 Material Part Three

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.

This week we’ll be seeing more material from Dave Sim’s Albatross One, his first notebook used in the production of Cerebus. Before this notebook, he would use sheets of paper just laying around the studio. We started this journey in Albatross One a while back starting with page #1 and Cerebus #20, and now we’re up to page 31 and Cerebus #21 material. If you want to go back and see all of the other Albatross One, aka Notebook One, posts, just use the Notebook One tag.

Last week we see dialogue from Captain Cockroach which is in all caps and you can tell by how Dave lettered it on the notebook page that Captain Cockroach was all excited and shouting. Well, the next page in the notebook continues that:

Notebook #1, page 31

In-between the Roach’s dialogue and the town person’s responses, there are some other world building bits, like the top right corner:

President issuing his own currency. People have been hoarding money. Now it’s flowing again and the President’s currency is worth more than Lower Felda’s.

Down the bottom there is a note for page 9 and some dialogue, but that isn’t what happened on page nine of the issue when what actually happened on page 9 was Weisshaupt giving Cerebus the backstory on Captain Cockroach starting with how he found the Roach and Elrod after Cerebus #12.

The next page of the notebook makes a reference to this at the top of the page – “Flashback to President discovering Cockroach and Elrod in #12”. There are notes about the Captain America – Bucky connection and as Dave wrote “inspiration to the people – absolute switch to blistering KKK white power Pro Felda Rah-Rah-Rah”.

Notebook #1, page 32

And there is the phase we all know, near the bottom of the page “Beat the Hsiffies – buy bonds”. 

The next page of the notebook has more on Cerebus #21. It seems to be President Weisshaupt explaining to Cerebus how he seized power from the tribunal, how Cockroach is the people’s hero, and how he plans to “split for Mealc. . .with lotsa dinero.”

Notebook #1, page 33

Since Dave used both sides of the pages to the notebook, there is a light image of the next page, 34, behind all the writing on this page. Don’t fear, you don’t need to wait until next week to see pages 34 & 35. Those pages were covered in Captain Cockroach Sketches from January 2022. So next week we will probably be starting with page 36.