If you trust the automorphic number on our cover, you may believe this to be the 25th installment of Canada’s most celebrated illustrated literary humour magazine. But just like Gen-Xers on Tinder, we’ve been lying about our age for a while (and, to some extent, our accomplishments too). Though this is officially No. 25, it could just as well have been branded Feathertale No. 27. But to do that we’d have had to go back and rethink a decade’s old decision which ultimately created a couple of freak issues of Feathertale which have always stood out from our lineage like some mysterious little freckled kids at a family reunion.
We wish we could say there was a valid reason for the numeric omissions, but it was 2012 and 2013 and edibles were new to us and none of us believed there would be lasting consequences when we published two issues of Feathertale without affixing the usual denominator. To the librarians, subscribers and pornographers who have collected each issue since our inception — we belatedly apologize for any unexpected confusion caused on your bookshelves by Feathertale’s Big Book of Exquisitely Egregious Poetry and Diverse Versification and So Forth and Such (our non-canon tenth issue, better known as our “poetry book”). Same goes for Eat It: Sex, Food & Women’s Writing — our literary cookbook.
This is our fifteenth year in print. To mark the magnanimity of that occasion we have created an issue that can literally glow through a pile of shit. If you don’t believe us go ahead and turn out the lights, block out the sun and watch the monkey on the front of this thing emit a phosphorescent glow that may well set off a Geiger metre.
So here we are — slowly radiating you with what is either our 25th or 27th issue, though most definitely not our 26th. A few years ago when we hit 21 we remarked that we were getting close to the life expectancy of an 18th century Prussian. We’re now knocking on the suicidal age of rock stars. Speaking of dead rock stars — there are a few within these pages, notably a spaced-out Keith Moon and a naked John Lennon (see “The Who Girls” on P44). If you’re more into musical theatre then flip instead to P77 or P86 for two distinct appearances of the Phantom from The Phantom of the Opera.
In addition to the usual assorted mix of manic nonsense that make up our pages (see letter from Tammy on P8) we’ve included helpful pandemic related content, including but not limited to a prescient public health advisory about the sanitary benefits of urinary saturation (see P12). Other highlights include: a deconstruction of what it means to be edgy (see P89); the largest collection of comics to be published within our pages since The Consummately Cartoonish Comics Compendium of Feathertale No.7 (see P97); and philosophical ruminations about life and humanity in the form of a Proust Questionnaire completed by Kim Jong-Un (see P152).
We send this issue forth to you now in the hope that it brings light to an otherwise dark pandemic. The initial lockdown of bookstores across the country resulted in the delayed shipment of our previous offering (No. 24). That delay led this issue to grow into what is now the largest Feathertale we’ve ever produced. It’s also, quite literally, our greenest issue to date, thanks to the nuclear hue of featured Pantone No. 802.
Assuming we survive the pandemic, we aspire to pump out another issue with no number attached and a title that is essentially just a definition of fiction. Assuming you survive the pandemic too, we hope you will read it.
Until then . . .
— The Editors
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