In 1977, Marvel Comics launched a new publication: a full-color magazine-format title entitled Marvel Super Special. This title was intended to showcase stand-alone stories that were too long to fit in a normal 32 page comic, and to provide Marvel a foothold in newsstands and racks where traditional smaller-size comic books weren’t stocked. Issue number one received much fanfare upon release, and remains one of the best-known rock and roll comics: a special KISS magazine “printed in real KISS blood”, featuring the costumed quartet of rockers battling Doctor Doom!
Apparently in the Marvel Universe, KISS was formed when four New York City youths found a magical box that gave them super powers and face paint and platform shoes. They then went on to fight bad guys all night and party every day. Or something. It makes no sense whatsoever, but that’s to be expected… After all, it was written by the man who created Howard The Duck, and, well, IT’S A COMIC BOOK ABOUT KISS. (Historical footnote: the author, Steve Gerber, had actually featured KISS as hallucinations in an issue of Marvel’s Howard The Duck series a few months previously.) The plot moves our heroes from Earth to Hell to an alien-populated outer space disco, battling evil and spitting fire as they go. The art chores for this issue were split between four different pencillers (John and Sal Buscema, Alan Weiss, and Rich Buckler), and Al Milgrom provided inks. It’s completely whacked out, an absurd hodge-podge of ideas and art styles, but the entire package possesses a sense of reckless abandon that’s pretty irresistible.
The next couple Super Special issues featured more traditional comic fare, in the form of an extra-long Conan The Barbarian tale and an adaptation of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. With issue four, however, rock music was back in the picture in a big way, as Marvel proudly presented The Beatles Story.
It’s a truly unusual item, an unlicensed biography comic with lovely and intricate artwork by comics-superstars-to-be George Perez and Klaus Janson, covering the career and legacy of The Fab Four in suitably psychedelic fashion. The text is by noted music and comics journalist David Anthony Kraft, and while there’s no real information included that can’t be found in a million other Beatles books (and magazine articles and TV shows and what-have-you), it’s still an entertaining read. It’s fascinating to see familiar details recounted in comics form, the four lads from Liverpool bursting from panels and cavorting colorfully across the page.
Issue number five featured the return of KISS, in another nonsensical tale. This time, the four made-up rockers tangled with an evil wizard demon and his band of flaming-headed faux Ghost Riders, all the while transporting through time and space. John Romita Jr. and Tony De Zuniga handled the art chores, Marvel stalwart Ralph Macchio penned the dialogue. It’s good for a laugh, if little else.
From that point (except for an adaptation of Xanadu) there was no more pop music content in MSS until 1983, when issue 25 of the newly reformatted title (still 48 pages, but now the size of a standard comic) featured an adaptation of Nelvana’s animated feature film Rock And Rule.
Rock And Rule is a disjointed fantasy about rodent people using music to overthrow dark forces of ultimate evil. The movie featured songs by Lou Reed, Cheap Trick, Earth Wind & Fire, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, and Iggy Pop. The comic featured a lot of word balloons overlaid on fuzzy pictures taken directly from the film, and some text material discussing the movie’s production and the musicians who contributed to the soundtrack. It’s more of a movie souvenir magazine than a proper comic book, and though MSS would run for another few years, this was the last time they touched on the world of pop music.
Marvel Super Specials #1 and #5 were reprinted in paperback as KISS CLASSICS in 1995, though that edition is now out of print. Issues #4 and #25 (The Beatles Story and Rock And Rule) have never been reprinted. All can be found through your friendly neighborhood comic shop, or on eBay.
All articles in the Pop Music Comics series can be found here.
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