Saturday, 12 April 2014

Eddie Khanna: My Cerebus Tree

EDDIE KHANNA:
(from an email, April 2014)
I wanted to send this scan of the letter and Cerebus tree I got from Dave in response to Jeff Seiler asking Dave for a Prince Mick sketch (back in 1998). Dave's responded to Jeff's request with a stipulation in Aardvark Comment in #234:
"Tell you what - if ten Cerebus fans send you a Mick or Keef sketch, then I'll send you one. Doesn't matter how bad the ten sketches are…..You send me the addresses of everyone who sends you a Mick or Keef sketch and I'll send the first ten…an Elrod bunny or a Cerebus tree on a post-it note. Their choice, Autographed by Cerebus or Elrod, even."
Not that I ever would, but I kinda wonder what a Cerebus tree would go for on ebay out of curiosity's sake. Or at Heritage Auctions (nyuck nyuck nycuk).

JEFF SEILER:
(from comments to Cerebus In My Life: Jeff Seiler, April 2014)
That was my first experience with writing to and getting a response from Dave. My first letter printed in Aardvark Comment (of an eventual six). For the uninitiated (or those who forgot) in #234, Dave printed my request for a sketch of Prince Mick or Prince Keef for me to frame alongside my front row center ticket stub from a Stones concert (Steel Wheels tour, St. Louis). He responded by saying if I got 10 people to send me a sketch of Prince Mick or Keef, then he would do a post-it note sketch of a Cerebus Tree or Elrod Bunny to the first ten. I ultimately got around 25 sketches (still have them somewhere) and Dave sent post-it note sketches to ALL of them. Including one Elrod Bunny "to be donated to charity" for one of the guys. That was a really fun "event" and initiated a correspondence between Dave and me that has lasted now some 16 years (with a couple of notable six-month long interruptions).

Oh, and I did get that Prince Mick sketch from Dave on Aardvark-Vanaheim letterhead. A few years later, at my first SPACE, Dave and Lenny Cooper had a very lengthy conversation about the Bible while Dave drew a Prince Keef sketch I requested because Billy Beach (who lives in Italy and who Dave stayed with for a week as a holiday following the end of Cerebus in 2004) had asked me to ask Dave for the sketch. The hair took forever, which is why Dave and Lenny had such a lengthy talk.

2 comments:

Margaret said...

Eddie - funny you mention ebay, as that is where I got my copy of the letter and Cerebus tree. I checked my ebay history, but it didn't go back that far. . .if I recall correctly, it was under $50. Still not half bad for a tree drawn by Cerebus (nyuck!nyuck!).

Eddie said...

Ha ha. I should have figured if anyone was going to find one on ebay, it would have been you Margaret.

Wouldn't THAT have made for a great "Untold Tale of Cerebus' Six Crises." Why, I can see it now:

"As Iest's economy began to collapse, the usage of Cerebus trees and rocks and Elrod bunnies as a viable form of currency on Iest's underground black market began to grow exponentially. Some repots even had a loaf of bread going for as much as 3 trees and a bunny."

"Of course, as with any economic system in desperate times, the proliferation of counterfeit currency also began to appear. Some rumours even blamed Lord Julius as the culprit behind them in an attempt to destroy Iest's underground economy by deliberately flooding the market with forgeries."

It would all result in Sgt Preston investigating and finding the 'Bunny and Tree' counterfeit ring.