Episode +11—Art Vengeance
By Special Guest Achtoonist PJ DeGenaro!
Greetings, gratitude, and abundant blessings to the strange and startling U2 fans who read this website. Our latest Achtoon episode deals with substitutions of various kinds. Firstly, after twenty (20!) years of providing high-quality and reliably amusing artwork for U2’s online fan community, THE Kelly Eddington (renowned Mathematical Watercolor Genius) is taking a very short break while she focuses on completing a massive commission.
She has therefore left the cartoon area of the site in my capable hands. (Me, PJ, with the poems and stuff.) But frankly, I’ve been so busy defending democracy and arguing with strangers on Twitter that I couldn’t come up with anything. So I enlisted the help of our own Fake Edge—who’s been moping around while Fake Bono treads the boards in New York City—and his disgruntled compadres Fake Adam and Fake Larry (who scares me).
I’m sure that fans of modern art will be sick on their own shoes appreciate their efforts.
—PJD
Fake Edge: Hi, everyone. I’ll be brief. We find ourselves a wee bit alarmed by Fake B’s band portraits for Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, which now also grace the screens behind his big hair-do whilst he shares his life experiences on stage. Of particular concern to me is the appendage that in no way resembles the neck of a Gibson Explorer, and which seems to explode from the center of my body, pointing in the wrong direction. Fake Adam and Fake Larry have concerns of their own:
Fake Edge: Therefore, we convened in PJ’s kitchen one night, raided her embarrassing supply of crayons and coloured pencils, and took our revenge. Fake Adam will start us off. Enjoy.
Fake Adam: Some of you may know that I’m a bit of an art collector, and that I recently lent my voice, expertise, and professorial good looks to a documentary called Francis Bacon: The Outsider, which retraces a trip the great 20th century painter took through his native Ireland. Bacon was known for his raw, unsettling imagery, including crucifixions, tortured figures, and screaming popes. I thought it only fitting, then, that I base my portrait of Bono on one of Bacon’s famous Triptychs. To my mind, the figure on the right positively shrieks “Bono.”
Fake Edge: Bono is my best mate. He can be a lot to handle, but over the years I’ve become quite comfortable handling him. I don’t know why he insists that my head is shaped like a Gibson Explorer, but I do think it’s his way of paying me a compliment. Anyway, it’s not as if his own head is standard issue. The reason he hasn’t let go of the hat that some of you fans call The Green Monstrosity is because it is one of very few that can accommodate his entire cranium. Anyway, while it is somewhat debatable that Pablo Picasso invented Cubism, he made good use of it with portraits of his many, many wives and concubines. Bono deserves no less.
Fake Larry: Figured I’d have a go at Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Kelly here. I would like to thank PJ and Fakes Edge, Larry, and Adam for coming to my rescue with their fantastic artistry! I am truly overwhelmed by their generosity. Once this commission is over (June-ish), I’ll be back with the next episode of Achtoon Baby, the world’s only source for watercolor-based U2 comedy.