Evil Gods and Sacred Cows

As if Passover (with its admirable anti-slavery theme) and the Pope’s visit weren’t excitement enough, the New York City Comic Convention is also this weekend (though I’m not going — crowds, odors, etc.).  And here, from Newsarama.com, is probably the best Convention-spawned quote I’ve seen, from my favorite comic book writer, Grant Morrison, of course (this comes after he explains that psychedelic drugs have never quite succeeded in replicating the alien abduction hallucination he experienced in Katmandu — and that he’s a fan of punk, Robert Anton Wilson, and the movie O Lucky Man, like all good-hearted people):

After a fan asked to be brought up to speed on [the character] Seaguy, Morrison explained that the series is three books –

“The first book is Child Seaguy and it’s when you’re a kid and there’s things you want to play with and the world starts to smack you and you realize that there are things you’re not supposed to do. By the second one, he’s adolescent so he’s starting to think and getting a little angry and he’s a bit more emo in the second one and he realize that there’s something wrong in the world but nobody seems to care. The people that rule the world have to take his identity away from him and turn him into a matador. So El Macho is this matador but he suddenly wakes up and he’s got a matador suit on and he’s in love with the beautiful Carmen and she’s carrying his child and he’s the most famous guy in this town. In this future, cattle have become totally sacred because BSE [mad cow disease] has gone through the whole village and you can’t kill them, but all you can do is dress them up to show them how tough you are.”

Morrison explained process of dressing it in high heel and stockings and a funny hat “and there you’ve proved yourself and it kneels down before you and everyone throws flowers and there’s one scene where everyone loves him and throwing flowers and cheering and Seaguy realizes, ‘Is this all there is?’ He keeps seeing Chubby the Tuna’s ghost. The third one is Seaguy as a grown-up…Seaguy Eternal, it’s the tales of Seaguy in the land of the dead, which is Australia, in search of his lost companion. Kind of my take on being alive.”

And this is the man who’s unleashing sadistic new gods on the DC Universe starting next week in the sampler comic book DC Universe #0 (for a trifling fifty cents — you may as well try it, and since it leads to what Morrison swears is meant to be DC’s “Final Crisis” storyline, I may as well go off the wagon one last time).