Brother Zeb is a cool Rastafarian tree frog, living in Knysna, on the South coast of South Africa. He drives a veteran red and white VW bus and has a penchant for cheese curls. His approach to life is embodied by his T-shirt logo: “Peace, Love and Cheese Curls.
Outeniqua Rust
The character was conceived by Piet Frans’ friend, Walter, and gifted to him to develop further. The first stories, titled “Outeniqua Rust”, were originally fuelled by Zeb’s fixation on cheese curls. The cheese curls eventually led to the introduction of a further character, Eval Seagal, a bird who turned orange after eating too many cheese curls.
In this series Zeb visited real places in Knysna, and interacted with real people. The colouring was done by hand using Copic pens.
In 2016 Zeb even tried to make the South African team to the Olympic Games in Rio (which he mistakenly called the Ten Rand Olympics- R10!). A little mini-book was produced and about 30 copies are in existence somewhere.
He appeared intermittently in the weekly local paper, but the frivolous cheese curl theme later had to be changed to suit the paper’s preferences. That led to a more satirical series, the “Zeb Zone”, which commented on local events.
The Zeb Zone
Brother Zeb appeared periodically in a weekly local newspaper. He commented on a number of issues in Knysna: the drought, the big fire of 2017, road safety, crime, shopping, infrastructure, etc. And then he was sometimes also pretty harsh on the town council who were doing their best.
Zeb’s future?
Will Brother Zeb ever return? Who knows. A next adventure could see Zeb going of in search of a shrine to Cheese Curls, only to find the shrine was actually a Hair Salon – “Chez Curls!” Imagine a hairdresser running after a fleeing Zeb, scissors in hand, shouting, “I’ll make you beautiful, Darling!”