(Kosher?)

UPDATE: The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals will be published in February 2010, hopefully in time for Purim! You can preorder it here. It is a lavishly illustrated book with humorous descriptions of all of the beasts on display, with an intro by Ann, a forward by Joseph Nigg, the bestselling author of How to Raise and Train and Dragon, and a discussion about imaginary animal recipes with Food Network star Duff Goldman. It’s a 5 x 7 small-sized hardcover–the perfect gift.

In honor of upcoming holidays like Passover, I thought I would ask Jeff’s better half, Ann VanderMeer, editor of Weird Tales , co-editor of New Weird and Steampunk, and a practicing Jew who teaches bat/bar mitzvah students, to give us an idea of which fantastical animals and beings would be kosher and which would not be kosher, in terms of gnawin’ off a bit o’ that. Answers below… - Evil Monkey

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Here’s my feature on the Eisner Awards, which recently announced finalists.

A quote from judge Jeff Jensen, senior writer for EW, that I couldn’t use in the Amazon piece.
Someone on a message board reacted to the nominations by saying something like ‘Guess it must have been a lousy year.’ On the contrary: it was a great year for comics, and the diversity of nominations reflects that. In many of these categoies, we could have easily nominated five completely different books or artists and walked away feeling, ‘Yep, we nailed it.’ In particular, I recall our collective frustration i/r/t the graphic novel categories; it sucked that we couldn’t nominate, like, 10. Very “Sophie’s Choice.” [I learned a lot from the other judges:] From Eva and John, all things manga. From Atom, a more learned, succinct articulation of comics love. From Paul, mature insight into the medium and creative process in general. From all of them, an expanded appreciation of humor; this was definitely a crowd whose personality favored laughter in many forms. Also: dynamic new uses of the word “cute.”

Sometimes our cat looks both strange and aristocratic…