Notebook 21: Cerebus #174 Page Layouts

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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After last week’s break from Notebook #21 we’re back at it. Since we’ll be going through the notebook in its entirety, it could take just under one year to just over one year to finish posting all of the pages from it. So lets get started. Last time we looked at the notebook, we were on pages that dealt with Cerebus #174. And now, with page 100, we are up to Cerebus #175:

Notebook #21, page 100

Cerebus #175 is the first issue in the phonebook Reads, so of course we get a listing of different comic book industry people for possible inclusion into the issue. Did these make it into the issue? I did a quick scan of the multiple text pages in the issue and didn’t see any mention of the items on the list – even if they did have a checkmark beside it. Perhaps they made it into a later issue.

The next page reverts us back to Cerebus #174 and starts nine pages of really tighten page layouts. Yes, when I got to these pages when I was scanning the notebooks I just sat there in awe. A kid in a candy store. . .

Notebook #21, page 101

And the notebook page is pretty dang close to the finished page – art wise, text wise it is the same:

Cerebus #174, page 12 (Women page 238)

We’re skipping ahead to page 105 of the notebook as we’ve seen pages 102 – 104 back in August of 2014, Dave Sim’s Notebooks: The Gathering. Yes, page 105 continues the page layouts, with page 15 of Cerebus #174:

Notebook #21, page 105

And yes, once again, pretty dang close to the finished page:

Cerebus #174, page 15 (Women page 241)

The text on the notebook page is ever so slightly off, as is the layout – but it is so very very close to that finished page. 

Next week we’re going to jump forward to page 111 of the notebook. Why you ask? Because we’ve already seen the other pages: page 106 in Page 16 of Cerebus #174, pages 107 – 109 in Three Saviors?, and page 110 in Page 20 of Cerebus #174. We’ll see if page 111 moves on to Cerebus #175 or not.