Artwork: "Cactus Water" (as featured in 1989's TABOO #3, SpiderBaby Grafix) ©1989, Rick Grimes.
GRIMES: "Though I feel this to be a significant story, (as well as my longest to date) and welcome further discussion on its ins and outs, for now I’ll let the intro insertions I originally wrote (as follows), stand ( they’re already dense, thoroughly story-related and of that time):
..."This approach is not just a disgruntled attempt to confuse readers or make a 'show' of indecision itself. Instead, it comes of a simple stream...
"Cactus Water" might seem to report or feign a dream. None of it was dreamed, (although) dreams and having had them may be its guiding force... (B)y now some of these techniques are familiar enough to me (through developing projects unseen as yet by others*) that there was no particular strain involved or any desire to 'fake it'. Just a chain of reveries, compounded without forcing all logic on them, or cropping all extrusions into line."
..."Maybe his behavior demonstrates a form of survival in (the) raw, unreliable world... (of) this story's confines (but implying a Broader Flood of which he and his plagues are only part). Shorn of any grounded reality, he bobs... (between the) most memorable or knowable or comforting... moments of any crisis... (All) pleasures (are sloughed off) as each new moment degrades then further.
"Perhaps more revealing are the many elements of masochism versus a mysterious and higher tendency to disassemble and dissolve all self-contempt. In any case, "Cactus Water" is more than a random, tossed-off display or a spasmodic, centerless croaking." -- (©1989/2009, Stephen R. Bissette).
It really needs to be reread. Will add that a version of the main character showed up again in one of my notebooks, principal player in a different type of story. I like his tenacity in the TABOO story. But consider reusing him as he is fun to draw, his features hark back to my childhood drawings. He is some true part of me.
I do wish I’d inked better on it. Glancing at it now, it didn’t ‘print’ well and looks like it fell out of a sketchbook." -- Rick Grimes (December 22nd, 2008).
