Notebook One: Swords of Cerebus & Misc

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Last week we finally got to material for Cerebus #28 in Dave Sim’s first notebook used during the production of Cerebus, aka Albatross One. And now, we are down to the last four pages in Albatross One. Page #191 showed some dialogue between Suenteus Po and Cerebus about why Po would go to the eighth sphere. Down the bottom of page #191 we had this text:

Po wasn’t fooled for a minute by Cerebus’ gambit in #20 sent in men sent men in to get him in Togith after arranging distraction used Lord Julius’ influence to get him into Beduin.

This picks up on the next page of the notebook:

Notebook #1, page 192

Kept him drugged until Gorce had enough troops to defeat T’Gitans. No idea of how good a leader Cerebus would be, so they wanted him out of the way just in case prophecies of a liberator were true. 

Three aardvarks were born within a few years of each other during the Black Tower Empire. Led to collapse and death of two of them.

So here we have Dave trying to sort out what happened between issues #20 and #21. Page 188 of the notebook had a calendar for May and June of 1981. In the fall of 1981 is when Swords of Cerebus #3 is dated, which contains the story of What Happened Between Issues Twenty & Twenty-One. While there were concerns of Gorce defeating the T-Gitans, the rest of those points weren’t mentioned in the short story in Swords of Cerebus. Instead it was Astoria telling Sir Gerrick that she should take Cerebus to Bediun.

Down near the middle of the page there is talk of the Albatross, the Festival of Petunias, and more of what is on Po’s mind: who kidnapped Cerebus?

The next page of the notebook is ‘what’s on Cerebus’ mind’?

Notebook #1, page 193

About halfway down the page is the text: 

“If you’re the same Cerebus the aardvark that everyone talks about lately, you must have a great deal on your mind. It’s not everyone who gets to be Kitchen Staff Supervisor in Palnu”

“Why does everyone attach so much importance to that title”

“That was the position Lord Julius held during Lord Jefka’s Administration. Lord Neddekin’s Nediken’s Neddiken’s Lord Julius came up with the rotating beauacrcy while watching a chicken be requested on a spit. He had Alettiley been a childhood friend of"

Dave says in the AV version of High Society about the above dialogue that he couldn’t steer the conversation to that point and instead had Astoria tell Cerebus about it.

The next page doesn’t have much – if anything – to do with Cerebus #28, but appears to be Dave going back through the history of Cerebus so far and making a list of the different societies / locations that Cerebus has been though so far. Note the text at the top of the page – a reference to the Swords of Cerebus collection.

Notebook #1, page 193

Dave says about page 193 that he “then realized a) it’s already too much to distill into a page or two in any rational order b) it will soon be impossible to do and c) it doesn’t actually get the next page of the next issue written which needed to be my first priority.”

This list of items from the Cerebus series so far continues onto the final page of Albatross One:

Notebook #1, page 194

If I had to create a similar list, I don’t think I’d be writing down some of these names: Aristonnia? Palnu’s Board of Justice? Lucius? I can understand why he stopped with the list as it isn’t getting  the next issue written.

Notebook One: Cerebus #28 Part One

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

We’ve been looking at material for Cerebus #27 from Dave Sim’s Albatross One, aka his first notebook used in the production of Cerebus, for over a year now. We’re at the tail end of the notebook with only seven pages to go, and will we finally get to material for Cerebus #28? Well, how about Dave’s thoughts on Cerebus #28 and 29?

Notebook #1, page 189

Dave had this to say on his notes for the two other issues, taken from the Audio Visual High Society, “At the bottom of the page: trying to get a jump on issues 28 and 29. Even though I usually didn’t have a clear idea of exact contents until I was actually working on the issue it was confidence-building to pretend I did.” Well, Cerebus did talk with Suenteus Po in Cerebus #28 and a lazy summer afternoon at the Regency kind of took place in Cerebus #29.

Yah, yah, I’m ignoring the Cerebus #27 material at the top of the page.

And here it is, on page 190, Cerebus #28 material appears.

Notebook #1, page 190

Dave had this to say about the material on page 190: “Trying to distill Illusionist philosophy as Po was applying it to mining Cerebus for information and then realizing that I’s ALSO not something Po would be apt to impart either. He would have been aware of the possibility that Cerebus had either planned his own kidnapping or was allied with those who had and want to know if Cerebus was actually part of “Eye in the Pyramid” or if he just used the name to get results but not wanting to ask directly (and in a larger sense wanting to dissuade Cerebus from “hands-on” political participation of any kind – that is, to persuade Cerebus to favour Illusionism – in the hopes that Cerebus could be lured away from Cirinism, Kevillism, and Orthodox Tarimite faith: which is difficult to accomplish when you’re mostly interested in “hands-on” political realities. Something that Cerebus picks up on and gives Po a hard time about). Layers upon layers of different perceptions and possibilities.”

The material in the middle of the page winds up being mostly used at the start of Cerebus #28, but Wenda doesn’t appear in this issue, nor do we find out that she is the ‘Executive Cirinist for Togith’ nor is she a head of religious movements as the text suggests.

On the top of the next page, we continue with material used at the start of Cerebus #28 – Cerebus and Po discussing why Po goes to the eighth sphere. And then we get a wall of text that is Po dialogue:

Notebook #1, page 191

It looks like Dave went over this text a couple of times with all of the cross out text and additions made to it, but I don’t see it in Cerebus #28. Down the bottom it looks like Dave was thinking Po had helped get Cerebus out of Togith and used Lord Julius’ influence to get him to Beduin.

We’ll wrap up Albatross One next week with the last four pages. Whooo!

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Eleven

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

We’re back to looking at the last few pages of Dave Sim’s first notebook used in the production of Cerebus, Albatross One. We left off with page 184 which dealt with Cerebus #27, which is where we’ve been for at least ten entries so far. We won’t start with page 185 because we’ve already seen it in First Look at Astoria back in April of 2022. As you can see on that page, it has a bit for Cerebus #27 (page 13), but it also looks forward at issues #28 – 35 with the title “Trail of the Albatross” and then a bunch of sketches of a prototype of Astoria.

The next page is a mix of forward planning – ‘Fleagle and Drew are painting propaganda slogans in Iest’ to ‘Magic is just short has just vanished. Cerebus is like a turbo charger. . .last continuity.” Which in the AV version of High Society Dave has this to say about it: “Cerebus’ magnifier quality explains a lot of what happened just prior to High Society.”

Notebook One, Page 186

Some of the other items on the list of future planning items in case you can’t read Dave’s handwriting:

• Villager from where Cerebus came from writing about Cerebus’ origins
• We’ve been up this high in the evolution of civilization before. Estarcion will cease to exist with famine shortage wars a hundred years of Cerebus dies, just about the time the joint develops a publish or perish mentality with widespread development of movable type.
• There is the simultaneous invention of movable type in many of the Southern City States. Palnu will be one of the last to allow it.

In the AV version of High Society Dave says he did use this in Minds: "We’ve been up this high in the evolution of civilization before." He didn’t use the second part of that item, but moveable type did make its first appearance before the end of High Society. The final item was used. As Dave said: “Lord Julius was willing to subject Iest to competitive broadsheets but not his own city-state.”

Then under the forward-looking items we go back to listing the pages 12 – 20 of Cerebus #27. Way down the bottom Dave starts some writing that continues onto the next notebook page:

Notebook One, Page 187

Dave had this to say about the text: “Writing my own Hansard was a lot of fun.” Having no idea what a Hansard is, I looked it up and Wikipedia says it is a transcript of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries and it is named after the first official printer to the parliament at Westminster. But this Hansard doesn’t appear to be used in Cerebus.

The next page starts with a calendar for May and June 1981:

Notebook One, Page 188

Dave has this to say about the calendar: “I’d make up my own calendar to make sure I had enough time to do the issue while taking most weekends off. Here, writing May 29, 30, and 31 and June 1 – 5. By the time I actually got to the weekend I usually still had to work most or all of Saturday.”

Then after Dave’s calendar we’re back to Cerebus #27 material. Did we finally wrap up Cerebus #27 with this page or will there be more next week? If you had your own copy of Albatross One, you’d know.

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Ten

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Last week we finished up with page 182 from Dave Sim’s first Cerebus notebook, Albatross One. With this entry the material for Cerebus #27 has taken the lead for having the most content in Notebook #1:

Item	page count
Cerebus 20	22
Cerebus 21	31
Cerebus 22	22
Cerebus 23	4
Cerebus 24	24
Cerebus 25	14
Cerebus 26	17
Cerebus 27	34
Cerebus 28
Miscellaneous	9

We’ll look at pages #183 and 184 today, and we’ve already seen page #185 in “First Look at Astoria”. So after this week we’ll have 10 pages left in notebook one. At some point we’ll see material for Cerebus #28. I swear. I’ve looked ahead and I promise there is Cerebus #28 material. How much? We’ll see that together. I do know that notebook #2 has material on Cerebus #28 as well. 

Picking up where we left off last week with page #183 of notebook #1 and another page 9 thumbnail. It is pretty close to the final page:

Notebook #1, page 183

The text below the thumbnail for page #9 is the text that appears on page #9, minus the joke about Cerebus actually being the sixth best crossbowman and not the third best. The text down the bottom is for page 10 panel 1, though it was dumbed down a bit more for the final page. As you can probably tell, the dialogue for panel one is the McGrew Brothers and panel two is Cerebus  telling them they aren’t prisoners, he is just getting a cut of the ransom for himself. This text for page 10 continues on the next page of the notebook:

Notebook #1, page 184

That dialogue is pretty much the same as the finished page 10 of Cerebus #27. Even how it is broken down into bits for word balloons. As Dave said in the audio-visual version of High Society: “I would ‘sketch’ dialogue as well. Compare these ‘sketches’ with the finish word balloons.” So here is page 10 of Cerebus #27 for you to compare:

Cerebus #27, page 10

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Nine

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

We finished last week with a look at page #179 of Dave Sim’s first notebook, so we’re picking it back up with page #180. And yes, if you guessed we’re still be on material for Cerebus #27 you’d be correct. In fact, we get the panel lay outs and some dialogue for pages #5 and 6:

Notebook #1, page 180

The writing at the top is the text of the note that the McGrew Brothers wrote, and we get the finished note in the notebook page. When Cerebus is reading it out loud on page 5 he leaves off Drew’s name. Notice in the text of the note Dave originally wrote pieces, then peeces and ended up with peesiz. The final texted ended with peeses. 

The text down the bottom of the page is some of what ends up on page 6 between the inn keeper and Cerebus talking about fleecing the McGrew brothers.  

Dave had this to say about the notebook page in the AV High Society: “sometimes just sketching panel designs can lead to a good idea. Like the horizontal panel at the top of the right hand page which gave me the ‘Cerebus held hostage’ gag.”

On the next page we get something similar – page thumbnails and more text:

Notebook #1, page 181

We have text for page 7, and a sketch that goes along with it – Cerebus sitting down with his back against the wall writing the ransom note. The rest of the text at the top of the page is the dialogue between the McGrew Brothers as they wonder what Cerebus is doing. One line that didn’t get used: “D’huh think he gets the conninennul breakfast too? Mebbe we gotta share ours with’em.’

On the lower half of the page we get page layouts for page 8 and 9. Page 9 is Cerebus leaping out of the window and across the alley to the next building and then running across roofs to deliver the ransom note. The dialogue to the left of the page 8 thumbnail is the dialogue for the McGrew Brothers.

The next page of the notebook continues the plot outline with page 10 and then starts with what is happening on the days Cerebus is “held hostage”. On the right hand side starting about a third of the way down is some plot outlining for page 9 and 10. 

Notebook #1, page 182

The date and time at the top of the page – 3:24 AM Oct 18, 1931 – is the death of Thomas Edison. 

Dave had this to say about page 182: “Then there are times when I would come up with a good line – ‘A HUNNERT CROWNS! WAHOO! HOW MUCH IS THAT IN MONEY, VARMIT, SIR?’ is very funny – but I would have no idea how to follow it up. ’42,000 Onliu copper pieces.’ Well, you’d have to explain to Dirty Fleagle what a ‘thousand’ is. ‘More than twelve times twelve’. Or explain it terms of gold. ‘Two chunks and some clumpy bits’.  That’s funny, too, but you can’t use it with ‘money’ which is what makes the original line funny. I finally just had to give up.”

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Eight

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

We’ve been looking at pages for Cerebus #27 from Dave Sim’s Albatross One since October. October! And we’re not done yet. I did look forward through the notebook (spoilers!) and we do get to Cerebus #28. . .But it isn’t today. And it probably isn’t next week. I’ll try to speed it up by going over four pages today. 

In last week’s entry we say some as Dave would say “over plotting” for Cerebus #27 and then finished with page #175 which was just some sketches and not much more. So what do we get on page #176 – more sketches or more over plotting? If you said over plotting, you’re a winner.

Notebook #1, page 176

Though in the audio-visual High Society Dave said about this page: “Another road map for the issue, keeping it strictly to a phrase or two per page.” Having gone through all these notebook one pages, I can understand why Dave is giving one or two sentences about each page. This is exhausting. The same thing over and over and over again. No wonder I skipped around and picked things I thought looked interesting. 

Most of this dialogue on the top of page #176 shows up in some form or another on page six of Cerebus #27.  It does get moved around – the thing about the flag comes after Cerebus gets the bank note fenced and secures a room, food, ale, etc. Then after the page six dialogue, it is the list of plot points for the rest of the pages in the comic. Page 11 isn’t ‘Games Day One they win small’, but it is just a full text page going over the rules of diamondback. So the little note to the side of that – “1/2 page explanation of Onliu variation’ – grew into a full page. The list also ends with ‘Games day five’ on page 15, but page 16 isn’t blank, but should be listed as ‘Games day six’. There is also a ‘Games day seven’, and then the games wrap up. The plot still isn’t aligned with the finished comic.

On the next page at the top it says ‘Page 11 explains Onliu variation’, which is what it does. So we’re getting on track. We get a note for page 20 ‘Cerebus lying unconscious’, which is indeed in the finished Cerebus #27:

Notebook #1, page 177

Dave said this about page 177: “How to write a humour comic: write everything without humour and then find the humour in it.” 

Notebook #1, page 178

Dave does say about this page: “A good example of the above: mapping out the card-playing idiosyncrasies of the McGrew Brothers as Cerebus picked up on them and then writing how Cerebus ‘read’ his opponents (which made him such a fearsome Diamondback opponent) and then dropping all that in favour of the ‘nervous tick’ gag."

Well, at least we get a sketch of the three of them in the room with their sleeping mats.

The next page is designs for the background of the room:

Notebook #1, page 179

And yes, next week is more of the same: notebook #1 and Cerebus #27 material? Will it be more interesting? Will it be closer to the finished product? Find out next Thursday. Or not. I’m not the boss of you. 

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Seven

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

We’re getting closer. Only 21 pages of Dave’s first Cerebus notebook left to look at. Will we finish it before 2024 ends? Nope. Sorry. I’d blame it on boss man only giving me Thursdays to post, but something tells me he’d let me post every single day so he can take another one of his extravagant vacations. . .so nope.

Last week we ended with page 168 of notebook one, so this week we’ll start with page 170. Why?  Well, if you remember last week’s entry, we already saw pages 169 and 171 in Playing Diamondback with Onliu Freelancers. So page 170:

Notebook One, page 170

Yup, that is the Albatross. Well, not really. A preliminary sketch of the albatross. The symbols beside it? Dave sad this about them in the AV High Society: “Albatross sketch with the symbols (which I remembered from the Ben Casey TV show) for Man, Woman, Birth, Death and Infinity carved into the base.”

Then there is, as Dave put it, a lot of over plotting. Basically a list of what each fraction – Orthodox Tarimite, Cirinist, and Illusionist – think of each of the symbols. Then below that list, those same fractions answer questions about the albatross – what is it? Where is it? Who made it?

We’ll skip a page as it was Dave writing up material on the game of diamondback or Howard the Duck. So on the next page, we get more plotting for Cerebus #27 pages 4 through 6. 

Notebook One, page 172

We’ll skip pages 173 & 174. Why? Because we already saw them back in June of 2022, but as you will see, I was an idiot. I mislabeled them. Yah, yah, I go back and relabel them. At some point. But you really want to see page 175 don’t you? 

Notebook One, page 175

Oh, you said you wanted to see page 175. And that is all there is. Some random doodles and what looks like Henrot. Or maybe it is just Frank Throne. 

Come back next week for more thrilling pages like these. Or not, I’m not your supervisor.

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Six

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Last week we looked at pages 164 – 166 which contained some page by page plot outlines, the reveal of the names of the McGrew Brothers, and a little bit of the scoring for the diamondback game they’d play. Now on page 167 of Dave’s first notebook we see the list of hands the three are playing and how they are doing and what pages this game would take up. 

Notebook One, page 167

Down the bottom of the page there is more plot outlining similar to past pages. It is getting closer to the finished Cerebus #27, but still has some differences.

The next page in the notebook continues with Cerebus #27 material. As Dave said in the AV High Society “The ransom note in its rough form. . .None of it finished but just getting me thinking in the right direction.” 

Notebook One, page 168

Yes, there are more references to The Eye in the Pyramid group, but most of this is the McGrew brothers dialogue. What you sign through the page is an early version of Astoria which was based on Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders when Dave thought he had abandon the “Mary Astor” character, which we know now he didn’t. We saw page 169 in Playing Diamondback with Onliu Freelancers originally posted in May of 2020.

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Five

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

In our sequential journey through the pages of Dave Sim’s first notebook, we last saw pages #160 & 161 last week, and we already saw pages 162 & 163 back in 2019. Those pages showed the first looks at the McGrew Brothers and items from Cerebus #27. And unsurprisingly, Dave continues with Cerebus #27 material on page 164:

Notebook #1, page 164

This page has more meat on the bone so to speak, with a page-by-page plot outline for Cerebus #27 and as Dave said in the AV version of High Society, this “Page by page continuity, pretty close to what I went with.” There is some McGrew Brothers dialogue down the bottom right of the page along with where they are from.

The next page of the notebook is where, as Dave says, he is “fleshing out the continuity”:

Notebook #1, page 165

In this fleshing out page, we see the McGrew brothers names for the first time: Dirty Armand? No, cross that out, Dirty Fleagle McGrew and his brother Dirty Drew. Armand? I can see why Dave crossed that out. 

This fleshing out of the continuity on though page 166 of the notebook:

Notebook #1, page 166

Dave had this to say about page 166: “Stray thoughts, usually going in the direction of ‘over-plotting’ all of which needed to be thinned out. Occasionally, I’d come up with a finished gag in the notebook (‘You SIGNED the ransom note’) but most of the time I’d come up with finished dialogue on the page while I was laying it out and penciling it.”

Notebook One: Cerebus #27 Part Four

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.

Maybe instead of rewriting this opener every week, I’ll be a bit more efficient with my use of time and have this standard opening . . .though Boss Man saying I'm giving the notebook away for free, I see it as a way of advertising all the good stuff in the notebook, and wouldn't it be easier to have a hard copy to flip through and read at your own leisure? 

Have you got your copy of Albatross One? That is Dave Sim’s name for his first notebook used in the creation of Cerebus. If you want a copy of the notebook – and trust me, as someone who has held the actual Albatross One, it is a pretty close duplicate and looks great – you can check out this post right here. Well not this post. The one at this link. Go check it out, this post will still be here.

Please buy one so boss man stops yelling at me for "giving the store away for free". Perhaps if he sells one or two or all that he has left, he'll finally give me some PTO. Wait, why am I pushing this, boss man is on vacation. . .I should just take off. . .

And if you don’t want to buy one, you can wait as I release a couple of pages a week and check them out using the Notebook One tag. But trust me, the notebook is much much nicer then my silly little posts.

Okay, now that is done, on with this week’s Notebook One post.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

Last week we saw pages 158 and 159 from Dave Sim’s first notebook used during the production of Cerebus. Those pages covered material from Cerebus #27. Page 158 was a list of plot points for Cerebus #27 and on page 160 we have a similar list, but it is more fleshed out. 

Notebook #1, page 160

There is another sketch of one of the kidnappers at the bottom left of the page. There is also more of a quick list down there as well of some familiar plot points: “2. Beats them up 3. Ransom note 4. Cerebus picks them up and dusts them off. 5. A really quick let’s get out of here from Cerebus. He's got the plan down pat by page four as well as the location – off over the rooves to demand – plays diamondback to win all of their squares and that’s when they doublecross him”.

After that and some more crossed out material, Dave starts writing down about how the squares work – Cerebus explaining it to his “kidnappers”. This continues on the next page when Dave switches back to the more fleshed out writing:

Notebook #1, page 161

Halfway down the page we get a description of the “kidnappers”: “both have hair trigger tempers. Reed haired Yosemite Sam type and black-haired Yosemite Sam type.”.  And again we see more sketches of the “kidnappers”. 

We get a tidbit of what is to come in Cerebus #28 down the bottom left of the page: “#28 Cerebus is going to have to hire a secretary to”. To? To do what? Will we find out on page 162? Will page 161 be the last page with Cerebus #27 material? Well, you don’t need to wait to find out, we already saw pages #162 and 163 in March of 2019 in Hold On There Y'Long-Eared Galoot. And as you can see, those two pages finalized the McGrew Brothers and still had material for Cerebus #27. We ain’t done yet folks.