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…
I’ve been waiting to write about Phonogram. There are so many rock and roll comics to cover, so many different books with different approaches, and this one looms large. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s series is, in my mind, the…
Growing up in a dead-end town, practicing guitar in the basement. Hoping music could be the ticket to something better. Ambitions of stardom, rehearsing the songs, taking any gig that comes along, imagining away the harsh realities of everyday life.…
I’ve discussed many of the ways that comics and rock and roll have intersected over the years, but there’s one particular type I’ve forgotten to mention ’til now: The blatant cash-in. The Monkees were the hottest thing around in 1967,…
On Tuesday June 28th, Brooklyn Bowl hosted a special concert promoted by Sailor Jerry rum. It was a strange bill, each act perfectly compatible with the image of the Sailor Jerry brand, but having very little in common with one…
Gene Colan passed away a few days ago. I can’t possibly do justice to this man’s life and career in the space of a few lines of type. He was one of the finest artists ever to grace comic books. …
In 1961, Harry Belafonte returned his attentions to the strain of music that had made him a household name. Jump Up Calypso was Belafonte’s third album of West-Indies-styled tunes (following 1956’s Calypso and 1957’s Belafonte Sings Of The Carribean), and…
Image Comics has a well-earned reputation as a home for both mainstream superhero titles and artist-driven alternative works, and over the past decade have published some of the most exciting and enjoyable comics I’ve run across. Many of these have…
Rock and roll often borrows from the wondrous milieu of comic books, adopting costumes, characters, names, and incidental iconography… Album covers, lyrical content, concert posters, concert staging, and even artists’ identities themselves are filtered through four-color prisms, building the mythology…
Urge Overkill visited The Bowery Ballroom on Tuesday night, touring in support of their new LP “Rock & Roll Submarine” (reviewed here). The band stepped onstage just past ten p.m., and proceeded to unleash an hour and a half of…