Notebook 21: Agreements and Illustrations

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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For the last few weeks we’ve been looking at piles and piles of snow. Umm. No, that was me. And the snow from the Blizzard of ’26 melted finally. Well, the stuff in my front lawn did. There are still piles around  town nearly one month later after several rain storms and days of unseasonably warm weather. 

But no, for the last few weeks we’ve been looking at pages with piles and piles of words. So many words. So many. But today. Today we have mention of illustrations and a small bit of text:

Notebook #21, page 145

The page numbers circle do indeed correspond to page numbers in Cerebus #175 which have illustrations. Page 15 also has an illustration as well. Then with page 16 it switches to the comic narrative with Po, Cirin, Cerebus, and Astoria. 

The text states:

These amendments had been made necessary when a number of authors and illustrators had determined that contracts with Vertigo Horse licsenscees liscensors had been signed which covered in reprints and translations which were not covered in their original agreements.

And while the next page doesn’t have a wall of text. . .it really would’ve been better with some?

Notebook #21, page 146

If you are looking for some more text, you can look at pages 147 through 149 which we covered in Dialogue from Reads.