November 2004


The Killer… Alice Cooper!

The Cool Ghoul… Rob Zombie!

The Mistress Of The Dark… Elvira!

The Two-Fisted Tightwad… Gene Simmons!

With a horrendous lineup like that, this can only be the shell-shocked, better-late-if-ever, post game wrap-up, spookshow edition of Off Register!

And when it comes to hosting horrors, everybody agrees that nobody does Halloween better than everybody’s favorite original Master Of Scaremonies, the notorious and nefarious Alice Cooper. What you may not know about the Coop, however, is his decades-spanning career as a comic book character.

Y’see, Alice’s very first comic book appearance was way back in October 1979 when he debuted as the star of Marvel Premier #50 which was a grisly graphic depiction of From The Inside, Alice’s loony bin album.

It was an excellent start, but the primitive quality of the finished product paled in comparison to the sharp stereophonics of the actual album. So Alice declined the many continuing series offers which subsequently came his way and patently waited for comic book production values to advance until they equaled those of the modern recording studio. When printing technology finally matched his evil intent in 1994, Alice released his next sinister series, the trilogy of terror known as The Last Temptation. Once again published by Marvel and based on the haunting album of the same name, this high quality three part graphic novel was illustrated by Michael Zulli and written by Neil Gaiman.

When I ran into Alice earlier this month during his current hard rocking Eyes Of Alice Cooper world tour, I asked him if he still thought that one of the major benefits of being a comic book character for so long was the increased level of physical fitness.

"Absolutely! I’ve always said that the best thing about being a Marvel comic book character is that they give you great abs," Alice replied, pausing to hit a classic Charles Atlas bodybuilding pose. "And you don’t have to work out to get them; they just draw in great abs. In fact, they give you great abs and great shoulders. You can’t lose!"

Well, you can thank Stan Lee and the late Jack Kirby for that.

"If you have Stan Lee do it, you’ll be fine," Alice agreed. "You’re gonna look good!"

And since you can’t keep a bad man down, Alice is back haunting the comic book racks once again—only this time it’s not just as a character, it’s as the audacious co-author of one of the Simpsons stories in this year’s 10th annual edition of Bart Simpson’s Treehouse Of Horror, which is nothing less than Bongo Comics’ yearly four-color fright-fest.

However, even the most hardened criminal mind needs the occasional accomplice, so Alice hashed out the sinister story with able assistance of veteran Bongo Comics writer Chris Yambar, himself a journeyman journalist and pop art painter who’s best known as the creator of comic’s coolest caffeine-fuelled character, Mr. Beat.

I got to meet Chris recently at Canada’s largest comic book convention, the Canadian National Expo, and he was pleased as punch to know that the rampaging CREEM machine was back on track and better than ever. "You bet I’m glad to find out that CREEM is still up and running because I love that mag maximum! As for Alice, he was a total kick ass dear heart to work with. He displayed none of the usual dumb rock star ‘god’ attitude that I've encountered in other sundry rock star meetings in the past. Alice is very high on my cool list."

Yeah. But how does the creator of Mr. Beat end up writing for the Simpsons?

Chris leaned back in his chair and his eyes grew misty. "I first met Mr. Beat when he appeared in my drawing pad while I was drinking a triple espresso at a local coffeehouse in 1994. After surviving on coffee mugs for three years, he made his way into his own independently published comic book which was distributed throughout America and eventually around the world."

Yeah, yeah. But what about the Bongo Comics connection?

"Well, because of Mr. Beat, a few years later I got a call and an invitation from the good people over at Bongo who asked if I’d like to write for the new Bart Simpson comic they were planning to launch. I jumped at the chance!"

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All because of Mr. Beat? Are you trying to tell me that Simpsons creator Matt Groening, who owns and operates Bongo Comics, was a Mr. Beat fan?

"That’s exactly what I’m telling you!" Chris said, jumping to his feet. "It turned out that Matt and the staff were all big Mr. Beat boosters and were reading his comics right along! Now how cool is that?"

I knew it was a rhetorical question, but even a card carrying cynic like myself had to admit that it was pretty cool. However, Chris wasn’t finished rubbing it in yet. As I slunk away in jealous disgust, he yelled after me with giddy delight: "This year Mr. Beat turns 10! I’ve landed the coveted co-writing chores for Bart Simpson’s Treehouse Of Horror annual! I got to work with KISS bassist Gene Simmons and the original monster of rock himself, Alice Cooper! The book goes on sale in early October! Buy multiples! And visit Yambar!"

I pretended I didn’t hear him.

The only other thing he could have said to make things worse was if he’d told me not to have a cow, man. But at least that last rabid rant reminded me to tell you that not only is Alice in the comic book, so are Simmons and Zombie. Not to mention the most horrific horror author of them all: the infamous Anti-Alice himself, Mr. Pat Boone, who also contributes his own spooky Simpsons story.

But Alice Cooper is so endemic in today’s popular culture that he also appears in other comic books from time to time in other faintly disguised guises. One prime example is Alice’s recent unauthorized appearance by parody proxy in the February 2001 issue of the Elvira comic book.

That’s right, there’s a monthly Elvira comic book, and one of its creators is Ronn Sutton, himself a long time Alice Cooper fan. I also met Ronn at the Canadian National Expo and asked him about the Coop connection. Luckily, I had my tape recorder with me:

"I’ve been penciling issues of Claypool Comics’ Elvira Mistress Of The Dark comic book for over seven years now. It’s been published for over 10 years and in over 135 issues they’ve never missed a month. The stories are mostly self-contained, non-continued strips, so they’re easily accessible to new readers. It’s a comic that draws upon Elvira’s unique sense of macabre, yet flirty humor, with no gratuitous sex or violence so it’s acceptable to readers of all ages. I draw about five or six issues per year, about 40 in total so far.

"Although I’ve been working in comics, animation and illustration for more than 30 years, my drawings of women used to be quite poor. For a long time my drawings of women would look like men with breasts and long hair. While working on the animated TV series Savage Dragon—based on Erik Larsen’s Image comic book of the same name—I ended up drawing a lot of sequences featuring She Dragon and suddenly my portrayal of females got noticeably better. So much so that afterwards all the assignments I was offered were to draw female characters like Draculina, Luxura, and La Femme Vamprique—most of whom were lesbian vampires for some strange reason.

"The Elvira comic book appealed to me, however, so I submitted samples of my artwork to Claypool editor Richard Howell."

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what about the Coop?

"Well, I was a big Alice Cooper fan in the early Seventies, and saw him perform a number of times with the original Alice Cooper Group. In fact, I still have my ticket stub from his September 2 1972 show at Varsity Arena in Toronto. So I was pretty pleased when we incorporated a character named Malice Spooker into the storyline of issue #94 called ‘Goth Sides Now!’ In it, Elvira finds herself performing in Spooker’s stage show as a virgin sacrifice.

"Oddly enough, the story that I’m currently drawing is called ‘This Is Vinyl Crap!’ in which Malice Spooker makes his second appearance. The issue will be published early 2005 and is scripted by my partner, Janet Hetherington."

I mentioned to Ronn that Matt Groening personally supervised Bongo Comics and wondered if Elvira exercised the same control.

"The entire comic series is overseen by Elvira herself, Cassandra Peterson. All of the storylines are personally approved by her and her company Queen ‘B’ Productions, and each finished comic has to be approved by her prior to its publication. So Elvira has a very hands-on involvement. Also, every issue has a photo cover, and each photo is selected by Ms. Peterson."

At this point I mercifully ran out of tape. Thanking Ronn, I beat a hasty retreat, but he wasn’t finished with me either. "By the way," he shouted out, "there’s a good overview of my comics, illustration and animation career available for viewing on my website at http://www.ronnsutton.com!"

I pretended I didn’t hear him.

So there you have the scary scoop on what all the hip hobgoblins were reading this Halloween. And any trick or treaters who plan on knocking on my door next year asking me to plug their website in this column can eat my shorts.

MEANWHILE: Speaking of chowing down on unearthly delights, somebody has finally given zombiemeister George Romero his own living dead comic book—and I’m not taking about any pasty-faced Creepshow EC pastiche either. DC’s Toe Tags is the most artfully fetid bloated breath of fresh air to bob to the surface of the horror comic genre in years. You know the fearsome formula by now: Big Accident = Hungry Dead. But with Romero at the horrific helm, you can bet that the bodacious babe battling these zombies will have her hands full, in more ways than one. Also, the covers are done by that maven of the macabre, Swamp Thing cremator—er, creator—Bernie Wrightson. So if you’re not excited by now, grue believer, you’d better check your pulse ’cause you must be dead!

Meanwhile, not to be outdone on the undead front, Marvel is pulling the steak out of their favorite fear franchise with their newly resurrected series Stoker’s Dracula, written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Dick Giordano. But whether it can possibly live up to the definitive classic Tomb Of Dracula by Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan and Tom Palmer remains to be seen.

Don’t tell anyone, but the first time I ever bought a romance comic (ahhh, stop yer snickerin’) was when I picked up Our Love Story #5 to get Steranko’s 1970 Bob Peak tribute "My Heart Broke In Hollywood." Well, break out the Kleenex because Vertigo’s new manga-sized tear-jerker My Faith In Frankie has a Washington Post cover blurb that breathlessly gushes: "Frankie is like a young Audrey Hepburn!" And she is—if Hepburn had been bisexual, taken Satan for a lover, and starred in Sulphur At Tiffany’s.

If you agree with producer Sean Connery that his movie adaptation of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen missed the mark, then you’ll want to rinse it out of your brain by reading Volume Two of the collected original series that America’s Best Comics is publishing. This time around, writer Alan "Watchmen" Moore and artist Kevin "Marshall Law" O’Neill pit the likes of Alan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mr. Hyde and the Invisible Man against H. G. Wells’ unyielding invaders from Mars in a monstrously grotesque epic that’s actually quite a compelling read.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same thing about DC’s True Brit, an unintentional horror comic wherein token celebrity author John Cleese helps transpose Superman’s origin to the U.K. with very disappointing results. Python fans will no doubt have an reflex guffaw at the Holy Grail sequences where young Colin Clark accidentally incinerates Ma Kent with his heat vision before inadvertently impaling a cricketer right through the gut with a cricket bat. But aside from those two bloody bouts of boffo humor, the remaining yucks are downright dire; none more so than the cringe-inducing scene when the above-noted impaling victim survives to become—wait for it—"Bat Man." I know.

Finally, one of the more challenging new titles to recently come down the pike is Vertigo’s Hard Time, a gritty adult prison saga that’s the brainchild of author Steve "Destroyer Duck" Gerber. The first Hard Time collection, 50 To Life, tells the story of fifteen-year-old Ethan Harrow who ends up having to do big time in the big house for murder. That alone would be bad enough, but when his latent cosmic abilities come to the fore, well, you can just imagine the close-confines chaos that results. But be warned: Brian Hurtt’s unique art style may take a while for you to get used to because it’s definitely an acquired taste, like heroin or the Comics Code.

Which, if memory serves, is just about where we came in…