Notebook 21: Unused Material for Reads

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 are picking up where we left off last week, with a page full of text for the phonebook Reads. I don’t think this was incorporated at all into Reads – the idea of a Victor Reid and a Little Victor, and their “discussion” – the writer’s role and the writer’s nature:

Notebook #21, page 115

I wonder what “Josephy Matt’s Lord Julius: A Peep Show” would’ve been like to read – having only 18 pages of verifiable facts out of a five-hundred-page work. This discussion about what the reader wants from the writer and the writer’s true nature continues on the next page of the notebook:

Notebook #21, page 116

That makes me chuckle seeing as how Lord Julius is an echo of Julius Marx. Reading this and then thinking of the characters F. Stop Kennedy and Ham Ernestway, I can picture Dave scouring through the materials he gathered from the JFK Library and picking out what he saw as verifiable facts. This discussion concludes on the next page:

Notebook #21, page 117

We also get a issue box number listing for Reads: Cerebus #175 - #186. We’ve seen page #118 of the notebook back in February of 2015’s I Want To See Your Armpit. So next week we’ll start back up with page 119.