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.
Way back in September of 2015 we saw some bits from Dave Sim's 26th notebook in
They Give Us Those Nice Bright Colors. The notebook, now numbered 29 due to changing the notebooks labeled Albatross to notebook to keep all of the notebooks in sequential order. But I digress. Notebook #29 covers Cerebus #240 through 250 and had the front cover said there was 300 pages in the notebook. It only had 150 pages scanned, had 134 blank pages and the rest were missing.
That entry from September of 2015 showed us some bits of pages #208 and 209 notebook pages where Dave put the issue number and a quick blurb of what the cover looked like. This continues on page 10. Though this time I looked closer at the page. It appears as if the description of the slides used for the cover where written down on another page and then ripped out and glued to the page with the issue #.
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| Notebook 29, top of page 210 |
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| Cerebus #256 cover |
Yeah, I don't know how slide #81 turns into the cover for issue 256. In the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury book Gerhard called this slide "Camp Woolner, Kitchener, Ontario".
Camp Woolner being the name given to Gerhard's "little cottage".
At the bottom of page 210 is the description of slide #82 which is supposed to be for the cover for issue 257.
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| Notebook 29, bottom of page 210 |
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| Cerebus #257 cover |
In the Cerebus Cover Art Treasury book Gerhard called this slide "Old Mill Road, Kitchener, Ontario".
