Notebook 21: Cerebus #175 Preliminary Writing

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 looking at material from Dave’s 21st notebook that was originally intended for the Reads phonebook, but wasn’t, we are getting . . .more material for Reads. But in these pages I can see the start of what becomes Cerebus #175.  Starting with a couple bullet points of what Victor would be going through with his publisher, Vertigo Horse. 

Notebook 21, page 119

I chuckle at the text for “Astoria Aliens versus Predator” for bullet point #2: Victor had selected what had appeared to be the least offensive of the assortment of material Dame Karberger had given him.  ‘These are the reads that have been nominated for a total of seventy-five Harvey Eisner Awards this year,'

The rest of the page was an interesting . . .read as well:

It was sheer hell being a writer. Victor also did the illustrations for his reads and the difference between the his personality which drew pictures and his personality that wrote words was the difference between night day and night. Drawing was just something that he did.

They hadn’t even had the of touched on the subject that Victor had been so eager to discuss at their first meeting; he wanted Ascension to be published completely without pictures. In the number of years that he had been writing his stories not once (not once) had the illustrator de jour paid the least attention to the text when preparing the illustrations on the facing page. Whenever Victor attended one of the conferences (as infrequently as he could manage it) every the other question conceived the accompanying illustrations. What did Victor think of his illustrator. Who was Victor’s favourite illustrator to work with? Did Victor own any” 

And it continues on the next page of the notebook:

Of the illustrations from Mother’s Little Helper. He had long grown tired of explain that the illustrations were arranged for a commissioned and selected by the publisher and that, despite his habit of including meticulous and pain-staking directions to the illustrator, Mrs Q fat roly-poly cheerful old Lady Howe (she of the wide generous mouth and theatrical loud gestures) persisted as a tart and slender recurred as the a buxom brunette with a haunting girlish smile. What Victor never mentioned was that after the first appearance of Lady Howe in Moonlight and Maternity he had been so enraged by the portrayal of her that he had sought out M Zulli’s studio at his studio with the avowed intent of confront him over the discrepancy and insisting that all future pictures conform to Victor’s description. What he had not been prepared for was the presence of the model for the illustrations in question. He didn’t confront Zulli, but (rather) complimented him on his fine rendering ability and asked if he might observe him at his work, doing preliminary studies for of Lady Howe for the second of his Moonlight books, Moonlight and Damnation, falls in love with Beth. Lady Howe soon went from a bit player to being the pivotal figure in the series.

Writes her into the Palnu series from the same publisher requested – non descript short blond with a sprinkling of freckles across her broad flat nose. Truth be told this was why he had lost interest in thee Palnu series and why he had been delaying

Notebook 21, page 120

Bits and pieces of the above appear in Cerebus #175, but not all of it. Dave is refining his writing just as he would with sketching out roughs for panels and pages.