Juxtapose Asks Andy Kehoe 20 Questons.

I'm in love with Andy Kehoe.  And apparently, so is Juxtapoz.   It's not "spin the bottle," butJuxtapoz asks Andy 20 questions here.

"Juxtapoz:  What is your first art-making memory as a kid?

Andy Kehoe:  My brother Ben and I used to sit around for hours and scribble away with crayons. 
We found one of our earliest drawings and it was of one guy screaming 'Poo Poo Poo!' and another guy screaming, 'Pee Pee Pee' and there were shooting each other with it. Maybe some early attempt at allegory... or maybe it's just about poo poo and pee pee."

Grant Morrison: "Under land of no free, am us home cowardly."

Sometimes I really enjoy the stories Grant tells (his work on the Invisibles, Doom Patrol, Hellblazer, the Authority).  Sometimes not so much (JLA, Batman, Xmen) and sometimes I'm just totally fucking baffled (Seaguy, Vampirella).

Regardless of my unimportant, underinformed, barely-counts-as-a-fanboy perspective, Grant is a brave, interesting, productive writer.   

Check out his bibliography here and decide for yourself.  Then go and read the Wired interview over here:

" We've deconstructed all our icons. We know politicians are lying assholes, we know soap stars are coke freaks, handsome actors are tranny weirdos and gorgeous supermodels are bulimic, neurotic wretches. We know our favorite comedians will turn out to be alcoholic perverts or suicidal depressives. Our reality shows have held up a scalding mirror to our yapping baboon faces and cheesy, obvious obsessions, our trashy, gossipy love of trivia and dirt.

We know we've fucked up the atmosphere and doomed the lovely polar bears and we can't even summon up the energy to feel guilty anymore. Let the pedophiles have the kids. There's nowhere left to turn and no one left to blame except, paradoxically, those slightly medieval guys without the industrial base. What's left to believe in? The only truly moral, truly goodhearted man left is a made-up comic book character! The only secular role models for a progressive, responsible, scientific-rational Enlightenment culture are … Kal-El of Krypton, aka Superman and his multicolored descendants!

So we chose not to deconstruct the superhero but to take him at face value, as a fiction that was trying to tell us something wonderful about ourselves. Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down and that seemed worth investigating."

In The Blood.

For the last two decades, vampires and the media have had a mutually beneficial relationship.  Think Anne Rice, Buffy, Charlaine Harris, and (shudder) Stephenie Meyer.  Fall 0f 2009 promises to be bigger than ever, spearheaded by the October publication of Dacre Stoker's (the great-grandnephew of Bram) "Dracula the Un-Dead."

Why does anyone care?  

It's a great, enduring question and to my mind, no one has answered it well.  Including this fun and interesting article titled "In the Blood" in the New Yorker.

"Unclean, unclean!” Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mina’s friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, near London, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina might be in danger, broke into her bedroom one night and found her kneeling on the edge of her bed. Bending over her was a tall figure, dressed in black. “His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.” Mina’s husband, Jonathan, hypnotized by the intruder, lay on the bed, unconscious, a few inches from the scene of his wife’s violation."

In Absentia.

In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use it usually pertains to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings (wikipedia).

While it might not be the technical definition, per se, I have been absent from this blog, and by definition - absent from doing any writing - for 8 months or more.   There are many reasons for my absence, but the truth is that I bowed in defeat to feelings of failure as a writer.  

Don't be mistaken.  This posting is not a cheerful signpost along a deserted stretch of interstate - "Hey!  All of you who were never listening anyway!  I'm back!  And I have a pile of candy and free money!"  

Only time will tell, but I hope that I'll look back at this post as an early sign of re-invigorated confidence in myself.  Perhaps in March of 2009, along with the warm and welcome sunshine, along with the first tiny green fingers of the daffodils, something is growing again in my mind.