Wednesday 30 November 2016

Dave Sim's Notebooks: The Overview

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.

There was a question in the comments of Dave's The Cerebus-Ending Crisis: Can We Keep Going? - Part 6 column last week from Benjamin Hobbs: "Margaret, the 3rd note book is the one you describe. (80 pages, blue Hilroy) The PDF didn't have a the back cover. It would be great if you could post it!"

So here it is:

Albatross Three, kind of, back cover
I've discussed the absence of Albatross Three, well, more specifically the lack of a notebook named 'Albatross Three', and I've gone over I think almost every notebook, but never gave the big picture of all the notebooks so I thought I'd put it in table form.

The 'notebook name' is what Dave had written on the cover, so if there was nothing written, it was left blank. The 'archive notebook number' is how I numbered it for the archive. Arbitrary at the time, now a bit confusing. Time for a renumbering - since they are just files in a folder, they are easily renamed to the # given in the first column.

#
Notebook Name
(on cover)
Archive Notebook Number
starting issue
ending issue
# of pages
1
Albatross One
1
20
28
194
2
Albatross Too
2
28
37
196
3

2a
37
40
78
4
Albatross Four
2b
41
44
99
5
Albatross Five
2c
45
49
79
6

3
49
59
158
7
Albatross Encore Une Fois
4
59
69
160
8

5
70
79
86
9

6
80
86
118
10

7
87
95
115
11

8
96
102
129
12

9
102
111
133
13

10
112113

80
14

11
113
117
66
15

12
118
122
98
16

13
122
127
67
17

14
127
135
72
18

15
136
141
64
19

16
141
149
47
20

17
153
164
59
21

18
164
187
260
22

19
186
201
71
23

20
mothers & daughters 
36
24

21
197
211
138
25

22
213
241
96
26

23
224
230
58
27

24
225

45
28

25
227

40
29

26
240
250
150
30

27
Minds rehearsal 
74
31

28
256
265
67
32

29
255

18
33

30
251

32
34

31
289
290
4
35

32
Spore & Konigsberg 
36
36

33
265
300
58

And a list of what has come thus far (with the updated notebook #s, far left hand column):
So it looks like every notebook has had an article with some pages shown, but more have had more articles than other notebooks. It also looks like there are quite a few covers that could be shown.