Wednesday 24 August 2016

Albatross Four

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.

So we've looked at Dave Sim's first three notebooks, which he called Albatross: Albatross One (Cerebus issues #20 to 28), Albatross, too (#28 to 37), and Albatross 3 (though it was unnamed by Dave, this is where it fits: #37 to 41). This week it is Albatross Four:

Cover to Albatross Four
Albatross Four covers Cerebus issues #41 to 45 with 99 pages out of 108 pages scanned. A couple of the pages dealt with a never published title called Cerebus Collector. There is a contents listing on page 14:

Albatross Four, page 14
Then on page 20 we see a sketch for the front and back cover. I've rotated the notebook page by 90 degrees to make it easier to view:

Albatross Four, page 20


2 comments:

Travis Pelkie said...

OK, Margaret, I think we all know that you know what all of this stuff is and whether or not it's online ;)

If there's anything that's not been made available since, can we see them some time?

Are the Captain Canuck stories Captain Canuck, or are they the Beavers pages that were in that book? Or is it something else?

Unknown said...

Hi Travis - I think the CAPTAIN CANUCK story was the wrestling match one where there was a script and rough layouts and I thought there wasn't enough "there" to do more than run a couple of the pages and the script. There was a BEAVERS strip in CAPTAIN CANUCK that Gene and I did and I did a CC pin-up on duoshade board. But I don't think I would have put those in THE CEREBUS COLLECTOR.

In the bell jar in the foreground is the "white Cerebus" prototype of the first stuffed toy that Sarah Hitchens did, modifying a kangaroo pattern and using white instead of gray fur. That's one of the great lost Cerebus artefacts.