Notebook One: Cerebus #23 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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening: 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

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In last week’s Notebook One post we saw pages 83 and 84 that features Cerebus #23 material and Dave’s schedule for October 1980 to March 1981. Lets pick up where we left off, page 85:

Notebook #1, page 85

And page 85 picks up where page 84 left off: Cerebus #23 material with Cerebus talking to the school headmistress talking about the Sepran soldiers sent to her school. 

Dave made a note in the left margin of the page and circled it. The note says: Call Karen re: “feminine ‘my God’” and an arrow from the circle to the text mon dieu. On page 11 of Cerebus #23 after Cerebus’ talk to the head mistress, the head mistress responses with ‘ma dieu’. After Cerebus’ talk with the headmistress, down the bottom of the page we see more of the plot of Cerebus #23: the school takes in a Sepran soldier and he sees Cerebus dressed up as a little girl. 

And behind the text on the other side, can you see why I wanted to show these pictures together? There is an image showing through on the next page:

Notebook #1, page 86

And there is the image, a sketch of the Sepran soldier. The one we see in Cerebus #23 looks pretty similar, but doesn’t have the bundle of arrows on his back and his helmet is much taller. The bottom right corner of the page contains a list of plot items for Cerebus #23 starting with ‘Cerebus settling in’ and ending with ‘smack’. 

We’ll see next week if page 87 picks up with more plot points of Cerebus #23 or something else.