Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Six

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 . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

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.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

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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Last week we looked at pages 164 – 166 which contained some page by page plot outlines, the reveal of the names of the McGrew Brothers, and a little bit of the scoring for the diamondback game they’d play. Now on page 167 of Dave’s first notebook we see the list of hands the three are playing and how they are doing and what pages this game would take up. 

Notebook One, page 167

Down the bottom of the page there is more plot outlining similar to past pages. It is getting closer to the finished Cerebus #27, but still has some differences.

The next page in the notebook continues with Cerebus #27 material. As Dave said in the AV High Society “The ransom note in its rough form. . .None of it finished but just getting me thinking in the right direction.” 

Notebook One, page 168

Yes, there are more references to The Eye in the Pyramid group, but most of this is the McGrew brothers dialogue. What you sign through the page is an early version of Astoria which was based on Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders when Dave thought he had abandon the “Mary Astor” character, which we know now he didn’t. We saw page 169 in Playing Diamondback with Onliu Freelancers originally posted in May of 2020.