Cerebus phonebook
Paperback collections
Cerebus phonebooks are the paperback collections in which Dave Sim has collected his comic book series Cerebus since 1986. They have come to be known as "phonebooks" as their thickness and paper stock resemble that of telephone directories. The format had a large influence on alternative comics publishing and was key in the move from the periodical-centric publishing style that was once dominant.
History
Swords of Cerebus
Starting in 1981, Sim started collecting the Cerebus stories in Swords of Cerebus. Swords collected four issues per volume, each with a backup story and new cover.
High Society
High Society had been conceived as one complete story, but Sim had not originally planned for it to be published as one volume. He did so more as an expedient:
I have arrived at this decision for a number of reasons (a) the difficulty involved in keeping each volume of Cerebus in print at all times, (b) the convenience of being able to introduce new fans to Cerebus with two large volumes and (at most) two dozen back issues, (c) a manageable format for someday having all 300 issues available, (d) the opportunity to expand Cerebus' exposure by making it available in bookstores.
Sim published it as one 512-page trade paperback volume in 1986. It was offered exclusively through mail order and sold out its 6000-copy print run within a year. Its success convinced Sim to drop the Swords collections and republish their contents as one volume as well.
“Cerebus phonebook” enters the record as paperback collections. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cerebus, phonebook and Paperback can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Cerebus phonebook” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cerebus, phonebook and Paperback provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5064118. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986 and 1981.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cerebus phonebook” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.