Notebook One: Cerebus #23 Part Two & A Schedule

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 80 through 82 which puts us into Cerebus #23 material. Looking back at the 82 pages we’ve seen so far this is the page count for each issue:

• Cerebus #20: 22 notebook pages
• Cerebus #21: 31 notebook pages
• Cerebus #22: 20 notebook pages
• Miscellaneous: 1 page on the ‘inside front cover design’

So lets continue on with page 83 of notebook one, and what I’m thinking will be more Cerebus #23 material. We left off with sketches of Madam duFort and another of Cerebus in bed, and “Katerine” killing a Sepran soldier. And page 83 continues with some discussion between a woman in the school and one of the Sepran soldiers.

Notebook #1, page 83

Then down the bottom of the page is Dave’s schedule starting in October of 1980. I based this on Cerebus #23 having a cover date of December 1980. The schedule if you can’t read it, and I’m starting at the far right, I put the years in parentheses so I can keep track:

• October 23 – 27 (1980) writing
• October 28 29 30 diamondback
• November 1 – 12 #23 drawn
• November 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 Swords finished
• November 25 – 29 write #24
• December 1 – 12 draw #24
• December 13 – 20 write and rough Canuck story
• December 21 – 23, 26 – 29 write #25
• February 4 – 16 (1981) draw #26
• February 17 – 23 Portfolio
• February 24 – 28 write #27
• March 1 – 12 draw #27
• March 13 – 23 Portfolio
• March 24 – 31 write #28

I don’t know why Jan 1981 isn’t on Dave’s list, as that should be the first half of Jan for drawing #25 and the second half for writing #26. So the notebook pages we are seeing now are for Cerebus #23 so that must put this notebook’s date as before October of 1980. I’ve seen schedules like this in his other notebooks, and some of those go to more detail like a day for a cover or a couple of days for letters, but I can’t recollect such a long-range schedule.

The next page of the notebook has more of the women of the school defending it from the Sepran soldiers and talking about that with Cerebus. And around the edges I’m thinking is when Dave came back to the p age and wrote down more specific dialogue that he wanted to use:

Notebook #1, page 84

And that is the last page for this week. I was going to add in page 85, but it gives away something on page 86, so I rather put those two pages together. If you’ve been reading for a while (since June 2014), then you’ve seen page 86 already. But still, I didn’t want to separate the pages again.