Notebook 21: Victor meets Oscar. . .Kind Of

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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Will it never end? Already two weeks of pages from Dave’s notebook that is just walls of text. And guess what? There are more pages like them. This is the notebook for Reads – well, one of them – so we get lots of text. For the last two weeks it has been for the start of Reads, Cerebus #175. The walls of text are fun in that it is Victor, the reads writer, whose ‘behind the scenes’ of the reads industry is a look at the comics industry of the mid-1990s. 

So without further ado, here are the four pages for this week – yes, I’m blowing through these pages as I figured more of them per week means we get to the “fun” stuff sooner. “But Margaret, don’t you think this material is fun?” Yes, yes random AMoC reader who lives in Matt’s head, it is fun. It is just a lot. I mean, look at it. SO much content. It is part of the reason I enjoy Reads, It is a read and a half. 

Bad jokes aside – though I do enjoy Reads, that isn’t a joke – here are the pages. . .which appear to contain Victor going to some party where he meets Oscar. Well, not that Oscar. Or maybe it was. Again, material that as far as I recall, doesn’t appear in Reads.

Notebook #21, page 125

Notebook #21, page 126

Notebook #21, page 127

Notebook #21, page 128