Thursday, 2 January 2025

Dave Sim's Notebooks: Ten Years

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.

Welcome to a new calendar year, 2025, and on to year eleven of the ‘Dave Sim’s Notebook Pages’ posts for AMoC. Yes, you heard that right, I’ve been doing this for over 10 years, as the first post was in June of 2014. You’d think I’d get some sort of tenure award, but nope. . .what we got instead was a genuine copy of Albatross One, aka Dave’s first notebook used in the production of Cerebus. You can get one for yourself as well, just click here to find out how.

Having held both the genuine Albatross One and the replica, the replica is pretty dang close to the original. Of course I had to get one for my collection, and I’m hoping we can get copies of the other 35 notebook books. Though I would rather have them bound like a book and not spiral like an actual notebook – as it makes displaying them on the bookcase easier. I mean, this is how Dave stored them at one point, and seeing this just makes me twitch (picture from Dave’s Weekly Update #125, March 10, 2016):

Dave’s notebooks in some closet at the Off White House, Kitchener, Ontario

Yes, I tweaked the colors as they were in a dark closet.

For last year’s recap I posted some metrics of what notebooks we saw pages from and how many, blah blah blah. Well, last year, 2024, it was all Albatross One. We started our look at Albatross One on December 14, 2023 and we’re still not finished. We’re close, as we only have ten more pages to look at for notebook one. Perhaps we’ll finish up this month. And then what? Just go on to notebook two? That notebook covers Cerebus #28 through 37 and has 196 pages scanned. We can spend another year just looking at one notebook if that is what y’all want. 

Since we’ve seen only pages from notebook one, there is no point in posting an updated list of what we’ve seen here at AMoC in 2024, as it is all the same except for that first notebook. You can see last year’s overview here for that list. 

Here is what we’ve seen from notebook one so far:

There is also the Notebook One tag if you'd like to see them that way. I haven't done individual tags for the other notebooks. . .yet.

And as a 10-year review, here is what we’ve seen in those 10 years, and what is left to see – I didn’t include the covers, just the pages we’ve seen as we’ve seen all the covers:


So out of the 3,281 notebook pages scanned in, we’ve only seen 547 of them, 17% in 10 years. I won’t have time to post them all, so what do y’all want to see next? Should I just go sequentially though another notebook posting every page? Please don’t ask for me to hunt down stuff – as time seems to be speeding up the older I get so I don’t have the same amount that I did when I was younger. What’s next up after notebook one?

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about the notebook that has the end of the series?

2 January 2025 at 07:06
Larry Wooten said...

That was me being shy or truthfully just forgot to throw my name up.

2 January 2025 at 07:07
Margaret said...

Hey Larry - Notebook #36 would go a lot quicker since there are only 46 pages left to see in that one. I think a lot of those pages are. . .boring? By boring I don't mean walls of text - Dave took to putting the issue numbers on the page, and for most of the pages, that was it.

So perhaps we can go quickly though it - do more than 2 or 3 pages, perhaps 4 or 5 at a time.

2 January 2025 at 08:11
M J Sewall said...

Margaret - You are invaluable. Not just the notebooks, but your amazing website is the best resource on Dave Sim and Cerebus history. I humbly off a Marvel style no-prize. Bravo!

2 January 2025 at 12:45
Mouse Skull Entertainment said...

Whatever notebook covers/runs up to February 4th 1985.

You'll see why...
#PleaseHold

2 January 2025 at 18:30
Jason T said...

Notebook #21? Looks like the start of Mothers & Daughters, which is where I started my Cerebus journey...

2 January 2025 at 18:52
Margaret said...

Thanks :) I appreciate the compliment. I tried a couple of times in the '80s to get a marvel no-prize, but never did win. nice to finally "get" one :D

3 January 2025 at 11:43
Margaret said...

Cerebus #71 has a cover date of Feb 1985. So that would probably be notebook #8 as that covers Cerebus #70 to 79. We've looked at 38% of it already. I'll see what is discussed in Please Hold for Dave Sim pod to see if the relevant pages have been shown already. . .

3 January 2025 at 11:47
Margaret said...

Notebook 21 has got to be fill of goodies covering as many issues as it does. Though it is by far the longest of all the notebooks with 260 pages to it. Whew! Only 213 of them to go - so it'd probably take 1.5 years to get though. Certainly doable.

3 January 2025 at 11:49

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