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 finally got to material for Cerebus #28 in Dave Sim’s first notebook used during the production of Cerebus, aka Albatross One. And now, we are down to the last four pages in Albatross One. Page #191 showed some dialogue between Suenteus Po and Cerebus about why Po would go to the eighth sphere. Down the bottom of page #191 we had this text:
Po wasn’t fooled for a minute by Cerebus’ gambit in #20 sent in men sent men in to get him in Togith after arranging distraction used Lord Julius’ influence to get him into Beduin.
This picks up on the next page of the notebook:
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| Notebook #1, page 192 |
Kept him drugged until Gorce had enough troops to defeat T’Gitans. No idea of how good a leader Cerebus would be, so they wanted him out of the way just in case prophecies of a liberator were true.
Three aardvarks were born within a few years of each other during the Black Tower Empire. Led to collapse and death of two of them.
So here we have Dave trying to sort out what happened between issues #20 and #21. Page 188 of the notebook had a calendar for May and June of 1981. In the fall of 1981 is when Swords of Cerebus #3 is dated, which contains the story of What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One. While there were concerns of Gorce defeating the T-Gitans, the rest of those points weren’t mentioned in the short story in Swords of Cerebus. Instead it was Astoria telling Sir Gerrick that she should take Cerebus to Bediun.
Down near the middle of the page there is talk of the Albatross, the Festival of Petunias, and more of what is on Po’s mind: who kidnapped Cerebus?
The next page of the notebook is ‘what’s on Cerebus’ mind’?
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| Notebook #1, page 193 |
About halfway down the page is the text:
“If you’re the same Cerebus the aardvark that everyone talks about lately, you must have a great deal on your mind. It’s not everyone who gets to be Kitchen Staff Supervisor in Palnu”
“Why does everyone attach so much importance to that title”
“That was the position Lord Julius held during Lord Jefka’s Administration. Lord Neddekin’s Nediken’s Neddiken’s Lord Julius came up with the rotating beauacrcy while watching a chicken be requested on a spit. He had Alettiley been a childhood friend of"
Dave says in the AV version of High Society about the above dialogue that he couldn’t steer the conversation to that point and instead had Astoria tell Cerebus about it.
The next page doesn’t have much – if anything – to do with Cerebus #28, but appears to be Dave going back through the history of Cerebus so far and making a list of the different societies / locations that Cerebus has been though so far. Note the text at the top of the page – a reference to the Swords of Cerebus collection.
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| Notebook #1, page 193 |
Dave says about page 193 that he “then realized a) it’s already too much to distill into a page or two in any rational order b) it will soon be impossible to do and c) it doesn’t actually get the next page of the next issue written which needed to be my first priority.”
This list of items from the Cerebus series so far continues onto the final page of Albatross One:
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| Notebook #1, page 194 |
If I had to create a similar list, I don’t think I’d be writing down some of these names: Aristonnia? Palnu’s Board of Justice? Lucius? I can understand why he stopped with the list as it isn’t getting the next issue written.
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