Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Eight

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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We’ve been looking at pages for Cerebus #27 from Dave Sim’s Albatross One since October. October! And we’re not done yet. I did look forward through the notebook (spoilers!) and we do get to Cerebus #28. . .But it isn’t today. And it probably isn’t next week. I’ll try to speed it up by going over four pages today. 

In last week’s entry we say some as Dave would say “over plotting” for Cerebus #27 and then finished with page #175 which was just some sketches and not much more. So what do we get on page #176 – more sketches or more over plotting? If you said over plotting, you’re a winner.

Notebook #1, page 176

Though in the audio-visual High Society Dave said about this page: “Another road map for the issue, keeping it strictly to a phrase or two per page.” Having gone through all these notebook one pages, I can understand why Dave is giving one or two sentences about each page. This is exhausting. The same thing over and over and over again. No wonder I skipped around and picked things I thought looked interesting. 

Most of this dialogue on the top of page #176 shows up in some form or another on page six of Cerebus #27.  It does get moved around – the thing about the flag comes after Cerebus gets the bank note fenced and secures a room, food, ale, etc. Then after the page six dialogue, it is the list of plot points for the rest of the pages in the comic. Page 11 isn’t ‘Games Day One they win small’, but it is just a full text page going over the rules of diamondback. So the little note to the side of that – “1/2 page explanation of Onliu variation’ – grew into a full page. The list also ends with ‘Games day five’ on page 15, but page 16 isn’t blank, but should be listed as ‘Games day six’. There is also a ‘Games day seven’, and then the games wrap up. The plot still isn’t aligned with the finished comic.

On the next page at the top it says ‘Page 11 explains Onliu variation’, which is what it does. So we’re getting on track. We get a note for page 20 ‘Cerebus lying unconscious’, which is indeed in the finished Cerebus #27:

Notebook #1, page 177

Dave said this about page 177: “How to write a humour comic: write everything without humour and then find the humour in it.” 

Notebook #1, page 178

Dave does say about this page: “A good example of the above: mapping out the card-playing idiosyncrasies of the McGrew Brothers as Cerebus picked up on them and then writing how Cerebus ‘read’ his opponents (which made him such a fearsome Diamondback opponent) and then dropping all that in favour of the ‘nervous tick’ gag."

Well, at least we get a sketch of the three of them in the room with their sleeping mats.

The next page is designs for the background of the room:

Notebook #1, page 179

And yes, next week is more of the same: notebook #1 and Cerebus #27 material? Will it be more interesting? Will it be closer to the finished product? Find out next Thursday. Or not. I’m not the boss of you.