Ignore It It's Just Another Reality

So Most Holy has a row of cannons pointed at his head and a crazy man has control of them. he also has a really bad cold. It's going to take more than cunning to get out of this one. Cerebus is going to need a large slice of luck.

The second page is one of those gross, but brilliant sight gags that Dave did so well. Cerebus puts on his papal robes, and while they're over his head he sneezes thunderously, soaking himself and his robes with aardvark snot.

Weisshaupt's first mistake is to send underlings to demand the gold. Boobah delivers them a message from Most Holy that promises them eternal torment in the afterlife if they go ahead with their orders. This causes them both to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the hotel, because Cerebus has promised them an easier time of it after they die if they do the
'honourable' thing. The crowd love it. This is right up there with baby throwing and kicking old men off the roof.

This causes Weisshaupt to scream at his sergeant to light the fuses and raze Cerebus' hotel to the ground. Terrified, the sergeant makes no move, and Weisshaupt has a coronary and collapses. The crowd love that even more. While Weisshaupt may have been a benevolent dictator, he was still a dictator. Cerebus on the other hand is Most Holy, he has a direct line to Tarim.

Cerebus decides to go back up to the roof to address the crowd. Partway up the stairway is plunged into darkness relieved only by that strange glowing light. In an effort to get rid of it, Cerebus hits the light. He immediately lights up as if he was given an electric shock. He sneezes and a stream of fire shoots out of his nostrils. The first thought is that he can now wreak horrible revenge on his mother in law. Unfortunately all that happens is Cerebus sneezes on Henrot and she batters his head with her ever present walking stick.

Then Cerebus hears a voice in his head. It's The Elf! Woohoo! I was right! She finds it hard to talk to him all the way from The Regency and directs him how to find The Regency from his hotel.

She's baaaack!

The Ambassador Suite

A somewhat peeved Astoria escorts Cerebus back to The Regency, scolding him about a future Prime Minister behaving like a common thug in a lower city tavern. It would appear that Cerebus’ plan to work off some frustration and cause havoc at the Rams Lords Tavern was successful.

Back at The Ambassador Suite (Cerebus’ suite) in The Regency they find a well dressed, older gentleman by the name of Blakely, I don’t think he had a first name, if he did we never heard it. Blakely’s presence was expected. He’s a kingmaker that Astoria has invited to assist with Cerebus’ bid for Prime Minister. He must wield quite some influence, because he’s able to tell Astoria to ‘be good girl and run along’ and get her to do it! Admittedly she’s livid at being spoken to in such a way, and treated so condescendingly, but she does it all the same. This astounds Cerebus and gives him respect for Blakely.

Blakely tells Cerebus that he has no real interest in becoming Prime Minister himself, but can, and will decide who does become Prime Minister. As he’s weighing up the aardvark, and deciding whether he is worth throwing his support behind, Lord Julius enters wearing a bathrobe and a shower cap, asking for directions to the bathroom. This throws Blakely, against Cerebus’ advice he attempts to work out what this means. Cerebus has already told Blakely not to try and work out the reasons behind Lord Julius’ actions because they usually don’t make sense. To confuse the issue, and Blakely, further Baskin enters, and the two men go through a charade of creating a fake letter.

Once Blakely doesn’t know up from down Lord Julius calls a cab and departs before anyone arrives. The cabby appears, he’s the same cabby that Cerebus met on his first night in Iest and the same one that he got to take Elrod out of town. There are a number of possible reasons for this: coincidence, unlikely, that’s not how Dave works, very little in Cerebus’ life is coincidence. The cabby is a generic figure to represent the common man? Again not likely, he’s too well drawn to be a generic. Only one cabby works in Iest or the upper city? Possible, but Iest seems like a bigger city than that, it is after all a city state. He is somehow important to the story? That fits Dave’s way of operating and is the most likely explanation.

While Blakely and Cerebus are trying to explain to the cabby that Lord Julius has left, the McGrew brothers burst in through the window. They have escaped from prison and are going to take their frustrations out on the ‘varmint’. With arrival of the imbecilic siblings the cabby starts to mutter and rips off his clothing unmasking mild mannered, common man, cabby Blake Jocksley and replacing him with ‘the merely magnificent Moon Roach!’ This is the explanation for the regular appearance of the cabby and the completion of the Moon Knight parody. The only thing that had been missing from the Moon Roach’s parallels to his Marvel opposite was the personality of the regular guy cab driver Jake Locksley. This had now been rectified with the appearance of cabby Blake. The unveiled Moon Roach fights and defeats the McGrew brothers, diving out the window when hotel security arrives. The appearance of the Moon Roach or as Blakely describes him: ‘Astoria’s boyfriend’, shows Blakely that it was the Moon Roach who dropped a giant crescent moon on the Head Inquisitor, not Cerebus.

Before the two can get back to business Elrod arrives to offer his condolences, having recently won the election and replaced Cerebus as the ranking diplomatic representative. Cerebus takes advantage of the situation to rough the albino up before sending him on his way. This also impresses Blakely. But he’s not sure he can back someone who people think ‘wee wee’s in the sink’, added to that the fact that no one, not even Astoria, has any idea who 'you know who' is or if they will strike again.

Cue the Elf. She zooms in and not only appears to Cerebus, but also to Blakely. She explains that she’s ‘you know who’, but she did that when she was mad at Cerebus and she’s not any more, so it’s okay. She’s overjoyed by the prospect of Cerebus becoming Prime Minister, because Iest hasn’t had an aardvark Prime Minister since….since….well since before they had Prime Ministers! Cerebus makes her realise who she’s talking to and she quite promptly vanishes with her customary ‘poit’. Once he recovers from seeing the legendary Regency Elf Blakely says that he can’t in all conscience back someone who talks to figments of the imagination. Cerebus denies all knowledge of The Elf, Blakely insists that she was there and realises that he’s out a very long limb with no support so has to back Cerebus as Prime Minister.

After the two rather pedestrian Petuniacon issues this one was a welcome change of pace. I also liked seeing so many figures from the recent past. In some ways it was rather reminiscent of Three Days Before with the reappearance of people from Cerebus’ past. Besides any issue that features The Elf is a winner in my book.

Repercussions

Cerebus wakes up in his suite at The Regency, he does check to make sure that he really isn’t on a park bench in Beduin. He receives a message from the Iestan Prime Minister demanding that he pay back the 12,000 crowns that they paid as his ransom. Cerebus decides to take a bath, and try to think this through. He’s about to run the bath when a disembodied voice starts talking to him. Initially Cerebus thinks that he’s having a conversation with himself, but then realises that the voice is really there, not just in his head. He turns, and is confronted by a small, glowing, floating woman. She introduces herself as the Regency Elf, although Cerebus can call her Elf if he likes. You get the impression the Elf doesn’t get many visitors. She’s extremely excited to see Cerebus as they haven’t had an aardvark at The Regency for over 800 years. Again it is stated that whilst aardvarks are rare, they’re not completely unknown, it isn’t said, but you get the feeling that whenever they do pop up they’re extremely important figures one way or another.

To say that Cerebus isn’t disconcerted by the Elf’s appearance would be incorrect. It does throw him briefly, and then annoys him when she drinks all his whiskey, but it does not have the same effect on the aardvark that I suspect it would on most others. He does try to tell the clerk about the Elf, but the man refuses to believe him, and the empty flask of Borealan whiskey doesn’t really help his argument.

Despite the fact that she can be annoying, and her penchant for drinking Cerebus’ alcohol, the Elf does know a lot of things. For one she knows that the McGrew brothers were apprehended, and that they’re being held at Hobbsgate prison. As they presumably collected Cerebus’ ransom it’s reasonable to assume that they may know where the money is. Cerebus breaks into the prison, and with the assistance of a stout cudgel finds out that the incompetent Onlian siblings did collect the ransom, but it was a worthless statue of a duck, which they sold to buy saddle sore remedy.

Cerebus finds himself back at The Regency eating raw potatoes (I know…ick! Apparently they help him think and he likes the taste, although you should leave the skin on as that’s the best bit), and mulling things over with the Elf. He decides to send letters to the businessmen who were so eager to see him not so long ago, and see if he can get any more money out of them. The Elf peers over his shoulder as he writes, and muses about the afternoons one of the businessmen; Ned Greely, spends at The Regency with his ‘wife’. You could call it blackmail, but that’s such an ugly word. As I said the Elf knows a lot of things, not all of what she says is totally frivolous. Cerebus pens his poison letter, and waits for Greely to intercede with the Prime Minister on his behalf.

To pass the time he plays wickets (croquet) with the Elf. She’s really not very good at the game, but she’s easy enough to talk to, and you should never get mad at an elf. I quite enjoyed the exchanges between Cerebus and the Elf. He teases her a lot. When she asks him what he’d buy if he made a lot of money he replies: ‘a quiet elf.’

I adored the Elf, she was one of the things that set Cerebus apart from nearly every other book in the market. The Elf was also a contrast to Cerebus, while not exactly innocent, she did give off an illusion of being naive, although she clearly wasn't. She never wanted anything from helping Cerebus other than his friendship. Cerebus on the other hand was a completely amoral creature with very few redeeming characteristics who hardly ever did anything for anyone without expecting some sort of recompense.

I’m not sure where the idea for the Elf came from, it was certainly out of left field, but then Dave tended to do that, you were never quite certain what you’d find every time you opened the pages of a Cerebus book. Going by her appearance she was based on Disney’s Tinkerbell. Years later I read a Tad Williams book called ‘The War of the Flowers’ (can’t recommend it highly enough, if you haven’t read it you really should try and get a copy) that featured an obnoxious faery with the name of Applecore. There were significant differences between the two, and I don’t think the Elf inspired Applecore, but she often made me think of The Regency’s resident elf.