Notebook 21: Campaign ’93 Materials Part 3

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.

We’re continuing our look at Dave Sim’s 21st notebook used during the creation of Cerebus #164 to 187. We’ll be looking at this notebook, which there were 260 out of 300 pages scanned, until we’ve seen every single page of it. Well, the pages scanned. If you want to see all of the notebook #21 posts to date, just use the Notebook 21 tag. 

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We’ve been looking through Dave’s 21st notebook and materials for the Campaign ’93 promotion. A couple of weeks ago I posted Dave’s letter to retailers which outlined Campaign ’93 from Cerebus #167 as the notebook material ties into that.

Last week was pages 52 and 53 from the notebook which were labeled 1 and 2. So on to page 54 which is labeled 3 and continues with Cerebus Zero material:

Notebook #21, page 54

And the transcription:

Cerebus number zero (gold logo) As an added incentive for every 50 copies of CEREBUS NUMBER ZERO – 1 gold logo. For every 200 copies 5 gold logo. Since venture capital is needed to finance CAMPAIGN ’93 in each store I would recommend auctioning or raffling the gold logo editions to produce a help you in establishing a “war chest”. Note the different word balloons.

Cerebus buttons

I LOVE CEREBUS – 2 colour button (red on the heart)

CEREBUS CAMPAIGN ’93 – one color button

Useful as promotional giveaways but can also be sold, again to provide revenues necessary to invest in other parts of the campaign. 

Staff buttons

If you only want to do a few

Those two button designs made the promotional packet sent to comic shops:

Campaign ’93 Button Designs

I haven’t seen too many of these buttons in the wild, if you have any others, please let me know:

Cerebus Campaign '93 pin (left) with Cerebus the Candidate pin for scale

I heart Courtesy of Gold Age Collectables

The next page of the notebook continues with more Campaign ’93 merchandise, this time T-shirts:

Notebook #21, page 55

T-shirt – suggested colour is, of course, black. Black t-shirts outsell white by a very wide margin. Include your store logo and address either at the top or bottom. You can use the back for advertising your store location, motto, etc. As with the buttons you can give them away or sell them at a profit or just do enough to outfit your staff.

I’ve seen a few of these t-shirts, here is one from Central City Comics – the front is on the left, and the back of the t-shirt is on the right:

Central City Comics Campaign ’93 Shirt

The rest of the notebook page continues Dave’s draft of the letter to retailers that ran in the back of Cerebus #167.