Notebook 21: Viktor Makes Coffee

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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Got all excited last week with that Minds logo. . .and then just more Viktor Davis lamenting about how people want to know what he is thinking so he proceeds to ramble at length. . .which we’ll be getting more of. . .and so I got to thinking: just how much more?

Since we starting the “nothing but Notebook #21” last June (yes, it has been a year!), there are now 199 pages of this notebook posted to AMoC. That is 77% of the notebook. . .how much of that has been just over the last year? Yah, yah, ask me to do math. Ugh. Lets see. . .I dunno. It is more trying to separate out the prior stuff from the “since June of 2025” stuff and that is too much work. 

So lets just focus on the positives: only 23% of the notebook’s pages left to see here on the bloggity blog. That is 61 pages left to see and if we do 4 pages a day, than that is 16 more weeks of posts. 

I think I’ve. . .WE’VE got this. And this week’s four pages are more of Viktor rambling on about his audience some more:

Notebook #21, page 197

The formatting is taking on more of the Reads look with the first letter a bigger and boxed in, the paragraphs!, and the fun swirly mark separating sections of text. And yes, it is a rehashing of the text we saw in last week’s post.

Notebook #21, page 198

Viktor asking Estarcion’s Neil Gaiman: “Do you believe in magic, boy?” And Neil’s response: “There’s . . .something . . .there.” 

Such a perfect time to mention the magic of aardvarks. . .I’d like to hear Estarcion Neil Gaiman’s thoughts on the magic in Estarcion. . .I know I know “autobiography”, not really, but yes.

Next we get Viktor’s instructions on brewing a cup of coffee:

Notebook #21, page 199

Notebook #21, page 200

Perhaps next week we’ll finally get to what he is really Really thinking about. I’m so tired of walls of text. . .Even though I do really enjoy reading Reads. Really. Really.