R.I.P. KEITH GIFFEN, QUIRKY COMICS MADMAN (1952-2023)

It is with great sadness that I note the passing of Keith Giffen, who would have turned 71 at the end of November. He'd been quietly ill for years, but he was finally undone by a stroke.

Co-creator of Rocket Racoon and Lobo, and creator of Ambush Bug, Keith wielded a unique illustrative style that made his run on LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES with writer Paul Levitz a legendary moment in '80's comics. He also helped redefine the Justice League of America during that period, granting the series a wacky sensibility, especially in its handling of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. And I would be remiss in my duties if I did not point out that during the ill-advised New Universe period at Marvel, Keith regularly swiped panels from FIST OF THE NORTH STAR, which was unknown in the States at the time. I only recognized his cheeky thievery because I had discovered the untranslated manga a little over a year before his short time on the series JUSTICE. I called him out on it during the early days of our friendship, at which he just laughed and said "Yeah, I picked up a lot of random manga back then and swiped from 'em like a motherfucker. Hell, we all did!" I got it. Anything to meet deadlines.

We met during my years at Marvel and struck up a friendship based on shared dark senses of humor and cynicism. When I was having a had time with the bullshit politics of a certain portion of my comics career, Keith heard through the grapevine what I was going through, so he would periodically call to offer moral support and remind me not to let the petty and childish antics of so-called adults affect me. I admired his quirky artwork and he was there for me when I needed propping up, so I will always appreciate his presence in my life.

Rest well, ya maniac. You certainly earned it.

 

With Keith at the 2011 New York Comic Con.

ANNE RICE, AUTHOR AND CREATOR OF THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, DEAD AT AGE 80

Anne Rice, the author who redefined the vampire for the late 20th century and beyond, has left us.

Though I enjoyed some of her vampire books, starting with INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, which I first read when I was 16, I never became as rabid for them as many did, as the series kept churning out novels that stretched the series world and central characters well past the breaking point. If you ask me, just stick with the first three — INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, and THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED — and the first of her Sleeping Beauty erotica, THE CLAIMING OF SLEEPING BEAUTY. That latter stuff will shock the readers of her vampire books, as they are replete with hardcore sex scenes, much of iot involving buggery, and in one memorable instance we get a young boy anally pleasuring himself via a large stone phallus that's part of a castle's decor. THE CLAIMING OF SLEEPING BEAUTY was so filthy, I laughed my ass of while reading it. Such a shift in author's content and tone was impressive.

Requiscat en pace, o weaver of dark populist potboilers.

THE STREET FIGHTER FIGHTS NO MORE

Requiescat en pace to the martial arts cinema icon Sonny Chiba, taken from us by the scourge of COVID-19 at age 82. His THE STREET FIGHTER (1974) was reportedly the first film to earn an MPAA rating of X for violence rather than sexual content, and it remains my favorite karate/martial arts film that takes place in the then-present day. If you have never seen it, I cannot recommend it enough.

From 2015, here's the raw footage of yours truly expounding on THE STREET FIGHTER and its meaning for and impact upon me personally, minus script and on the floor at a now-defunct Park Slope comics shop. (special thanks to Bill Scurry)

IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO TODAY

Dear Vaulties-

here's a re-run from the past couple of years, complete with the title change and a few edits to render the accurate passage of time. Bear with it, because this has become an annual fixture.

 NOTE : every word of the following story is true (or rather remembered as exactly as humanly possible given that nearly four decades have elapsed since it happened), and if you find some of it offensive at this late date, imagine being in my shoes at age fifteen!

December 9th, 1980-

It was the start of my tenth grade school day morning and I was disgruntled (as usual) at being denied sleep and instead being herded along with the rest of the cattle at Westport, CT's Staples High School into yet another inane class.

The first item of regurgitation/education of the morning was English with Mr. Dyskolos (not his real name; changed for reasons soon to be apparent), a late-forty-something red-headed guy who then resembled what Danny Bonaduce looks like today, who was also among the minute handful of teachers whose classes would keep students awake because he was genuinely interesting, did not talk down to the kids, and had not allowed the thankless teaching system to beat him down and force him to consider his job a mocking reminder of wage-slavery. (I'm the son of a veteran high school teacher, so I speak with a working knowledge of such things.)

As the students took their chairs we all noticed that Mr. Dyskolos's usual laid-back manner seemed somewhat "off" that morning and after nearly a minute of total silence while he stared into space as though contemplating some cosmic truth or inevitability, he suddenly focused himself, looked at us and said, as serious as a heart attack, "By the look of you, you haven't heard what happened this morning. I'll just get right to it. John Lennon, de facto leader of the Beatles, was shot dead by some lunatic fan." Most of the class had indeed not heard about Lennon's murder and those of us who hadn't, myself among them, were stunned. But before the horrible truth could fully set in, Mr. Dyskolos continued. "You kids probably know a lot about the Beatles from what your parents or maybe your older brothers and sisters played for you, but you can't even begin to imagine the worldwide pop culture impact those guys had at the time. Obviously I was there for the 1960's and can tell you firsthand what it was like, but I'm gonna spare you that nauseating, self-indulgent trip down memory lane. I guarantee you that all your other teachers are going to suspend actual teaching for the day and drag you along for their reminiscences of their flower-power salad days, but I'm not gonna do that to you. Instead, I'm gonna tell you a few truths that you won't hear anywhere else in this school, or damn near anywhere else, on what's gonna no doubt be a day of worldwide mourning."

He leaned forward in his chair, his face a mask of utmost solemnity, and uttered words that blew the minds of the roomful of privileged suburban white kids (and me): "The Beatles sucked. They were a bunch of marginally talented 'heads' who started out ripping off the work of their black American influences and made a hell of a lot of money for no good reason, killing real rock 'n' roll in the process and unleashing legions of even less-talented imitators in that godawful British Invasion nonsense. And then they went to India, supposedly to gain 'enlightenment' or some other George Harrison-inspired bee-ess, but if you ask me all it did was make their music more annoying." To emphasize that point of criticism, Mr. Dyskolos began making a nasal and high-pitched "neeeeeeer neeeeeer neeeeeeeeeee neeeer" sound by way of approximating the tones of a sitar.

By this point in his diatribe you could have heard an amoeba fart.

Young eyes practically bugged out of their sockets and jaws had fallen into laps. This was rock 'n' roll blasphemy in the extreme, and on the morning of the senseless slaughter of a man held by most in the room to be a hero of peace, love and great music, no less. Our worlds were shaken to the core. And then Mr. Dyskolos continued, still looking solemn, but his mouth betrayed a slight half-smile as he was very obviously enjoying his class' speechless outrage.

"Then they put out that asinine White Album that had exactly two good songs on it — 'Birthday" and 'Back in the U.S.S.R.,' and those two were good because they sound like actual rock 'n' roll! — and they had the fucking unbelievable nerve to include that 'Revolution 9' horseshit! What the hell was that? (assumes comedic Liverpudlian accent) 'Noombuh nine? Noombuh nine?' What a load of crap! I'm telling you kids right here and now, remember how 'deep' that bullshit is when you decide to give acid a try!" (NOTE: this was the first time I ever hear a teacher curse when not discussing some of the content in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.)

Before he could say another word, Mr. Dyskolos was cut off and drowned out by an aural assault of irate dissenting opinion, his every word being tarred as the rantings of an anti-peace & love curmudgeon who "just didn't get it." "Who do you think you are???" shrieked several of my classmates. "The Beatles were the most important band in history! John Lennon and Paul McCartney were two of the greatest songwriters who ever lived! Are you crazy?" Dyskolos responded with a sneer that would have done Vincent Price proud and uttered my favorite comeback heard in all of my teenage years, whether I agreed with him or not: "What the hell did they ever write that was worth a goddamn? 'We all live in a yellow submarine?' Puh-leeeeze. The only reason you kids enshrine those hacks is because of nostalgia filtered down from parents who were barely your age when the Beatles showed up and absorbed by the general public and your older brothers and sisters who used that garbage as a soundtrack for when they'd sneak off to smoke weed in the back of a 'bitchin' van. Which also explains how anybody could ever find the stomach to listen to those Doors assholes! Face it, kids. For some of what are supposed to be this country's brightest young minds, you sure are a bunch of programmed parrots!" And when one of the students blurted out that John Lennon was a symbol of "give peace a chance," our sage teacher batted that one aside with "You've obviously never heard about the time when Mr. Give Peace A Chance went to some club and hung out with a Kotex stuck to his forehead," a then-shocking truth that only elicited more teenage keening.

That was the real meat of it but the back and forth ranting went on for the class's full hour, with order barely being restored with the ringing of the bell marking the rotation to the next class. Each of my classmates and I zombied off to the next class and swiftly discovered that Mr. Dyskolos had been correct in his auguring. Indeed, each and every teacher I had to endure for the rest of the day derailed the planned curriculum in favor of rose-colored reminiscences of "a more innocent time" full of free love, "the people getting together, man!"and how the Beatles were the troubadours that saw them through all of it and changed to reflect the time. That was all well and good in theory, but not for hours on end as heard from speakers of wildly varying levels of eloquence (to say nothing of interest), with lunch being the day's only respite from what was essentially the same story only with the most minor of variations. When the day finally ended I headed downtown to do my volunteer teaching of a cartooning class at the local YMCA and the journey allowed me some time to process the events of the day and the "truths" imparted.

I'd grown up liking the Beatles quite a lot but didn't own any of their albums on vinyl thanks to their many hits being available in endless rotation on some of the nascent stations that played what would come to be known as "classic rock," and as the seventies ended I avoided the agonizing repetition of disco and such by listening to the excellent oldies station WBLI out of Long Island, a radio entity that served to plant the seeds of my passion for pre-1970's rock that was either primitive and raw or bizarre and very much off the beaten path. WBLI played some of the standard Beatles hits, but they also threw stuff like "Devil in Her Heart," "Dig A Pony" and "Rain" (nowadays my favorite Beatles tune of all) into the mix and showed me just how much the classic rock stations played the same Fab Four songs over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseum, and taking into account the espoused theory — voiced with absolute certainty of its veracity — that myself and my fellow students may have been a bunch of programmed drones, I began to wonder if Mr. Dyskolos had in fact done his young charges a favor by showing none of the rote reverence extended to the favorite sons of Liverpool by all who drew breath. He had effectively "killed our idol" on the day when one would expect nothing but 100% adherence to the party line, and that greatly intrigued my punk rock-influenced sensibilities.

As I pondered these thoughts, I wandered past Westport Record and Tape, one of the town's most accessible record stores, and greeted Jean, the sweet southern proprietor. I asked her if the shooting of John Lennon had affected her sales that day and she said, "Honey, look over at the Beatles and John Lennon sections. Whadda you see? Tumbleweeds 'n' cattle skulls, that's what! Folks came in and cleaned the place out like they were a bunch of vinyl-eatin' locusts! On sales of Beatles and Lennon records alone, I could close early today." And it was true. Every single Beatles/Lennon platter had vanished into the Westport ether, bought up by fools who believed those perennial best-sellers (okay, maybe not SOMETIME IN NEW YORK CITY) would become instant collector's items.

Later that night as I lay there in my bed staring up at the white stucco ceiling, I listened to my cassette tape of SERGEANT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (the only Beatles album I owned at the time) and experienced it in a way that I never had before. I'd listened to it about two dozen times since acquiring it a couple of years previous, but now it served as a poignant grave marker for my favorite member of the Beatles and its words took on a whole new timbre. No one would be "fixing a hole" in Lennon and ensuring he would live to see sixty-four and beyond. He would not be getting better and there would be no more good mornings for him. Yet tragic though it was, this was just another day in the collective life, and that life would go on without John Lennon (though obviously not "within").

I remember the hue and cry when Elvis Presley, the so-called King of Rock 'n' Roll, gave up the ghost and people acted as though the world had come to an end, and I frankly didn't get it. I liked some of Elvis's music, but it didn't really speak to me in the way that the Beatles had and I now chalk that up to the Beatles happening during what could arguably be considered the most pivotal period of the twentieth century, a time that redefined much of American culture and into which my generation was born. We didn't grow up with Elvis, whose music helped set the template of rock 'n' roll, but we did come along during the rise of the Beatles and reached early sentience while under the influence of their sound. We couldn't know at the time just what their contribution meant, but we did know that we liked it. Obsessive poring over the minutia of the whys and wherefores of their lives, art and careers would come later. At that point in our young lives love was indeed all we needed, and in the wake of the plastic disco era and what small impact punk had in the U.S. at the time, that wasn't a bad thing.

So today marks the fortieth anniversary of John Lennon's senseless slaughter and for me the day that it happened becomes ever more remote, so I figured I'd jot down my experience of it before age robs it of what clarity remains. If any of you have tales of that day, please write in and share.

THE QUEEN IS DEAD: R.I.P. LITTLE RICHARD (1932-2020)

Madness personified, and the 1950's exclaimed "WHAT THE FUCK?!!?"

Richard Penniman, better known and beloved as Little Richard, one of the founding fathers of rock 'n' roll, has shuffled off this mortal coil, and I hope and pray that his last word was his signature "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" 

 

Crazy as a soup sandwich and gayer than a tree full of songbirds, Richard was arguably rock 'n' roll's first badass queer (at least within the mainstream), and you had better believe he did not care what anyone had to say about it. The guy was a showman to the nth degree, possessed of enough energy to power a continent, and his musicianship on the ivories was so far above criticism as to be untouchable. His antics onstage combined the raw energy of early rock 'n' roll with an aura of "I just escaped from a mental institution with my dick in my hands, and I dare y'all to catch me so you can line up to kiss my black ass," which certainly made him a unique presence in his era. (Though, to be fair, Jerry Lee Lewis was arguably the only one of rock's Mount Rushmore who gave Richard a run for his money in the showmanship insanity department.) Simply put, there was much to love about Richard, and one aspect of him that seldom gets brought up is that he taught us straight boys that not only was outright flamboyance fun, it was cool.

So it is with reverence and respect that I bid Little Richard a fond "Requiescat en pace" with not a trace of sadness, because he truly pioneered the uniquely black flavor of American craziness to popular music, and that is a joyous thing indeed.  Thus I close this eulogy  with an anecdote from when I was in my teens, a quote from my mom on Little Richard: 

"Oh, god, Little Richard... When we first saw him on TV in the Fifties, it was like some kind of space-alien had just stepped out of a flying saucer. No one had ever seen anything like that on television, and I distinctly remember saying out loud 'What the hell did I just watch?' when his performance was over. The only thing I can remember that was as crazy around that time was James Brown with that cape, but that's another level of weirdness."

R.I.P., RENE AUBERJONOIS, STAR TREK'S SHAPE-SHIFTING CONSTABLE AND VOICE OF PETER PARKER, GONE AT 79

Rene Auberjonois, all but unrecognizable beneath his makeup as Odo on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (1993-1999), yet he made the character utterly memorable.

R.I.P. to René Auberjonois, best known to most as shape-shifting constable Odo on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. However, he will always hold a special place in my heart as the voice of Peter Parker on the classic 1972 children's album THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. 

One of the defining albums of my childhood.

It was an excellent Spider-Man audio play, coupled with marvelously cheesy early-1970's "bubblegum"-styled rock songs (making the LP a self-proclaimed "rockomic") that actually accented and propelled the narrative, and it was also the place where I first encountered one of my eventual favorite heroes of all time, specifically Doctor Strange. 

The record also holds a special place in my memory as being a gift that was given to me when my family traumatically moved from South San Francisco to Westport, CT, just a week or two shy of my seventh birthday. I found myself dropped into an unfamiliar and quite hostile environment with no friends while my parents struggled daily with the misery of each other, so I spent many hours listening to this album, escaping from the shit show that was my 7-year-old life while accompanied by the trusted and beloved presence of Spider-Man, who was given a solid vocal performance by Auberjonois. And his back-and-forth interplay with Andrew Robinson and Armin Shimerman on DEEP SPACE NINE was one of the show's defining highlights, proving that the right actor can bring even the most unlikely and fantastical of material to entertaining and believable life.

With Armin Shimerman on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.

So, thank you, René, from the bottom of my heart. May you find well-earned rest and peace with the Founders.

The man behind the morphing.

ELVIS PRESLEY IS STILL DEAD (A Vault of Buncheness Perennial)

Surprisingly, not a scene from a special episode of ACCORDING TO JIM.

It's the anniversary of the passing of the King, and I remember that day in 1977 like it was yesterday.

It was the summer of STAR WARS, a heady time for Americans in the early stages of teendom.  I had just barely turned twelve and was quite immersed in the history and music of rock 'n' roll, and although I had listened to a lot of Elvis Presley I just didn't get what the big deal was. I'd seen the footage of his appearances on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, suffered through a few of his (mostly) wretched flicks thanks to THE 4:30 MOVIE, 

Elvis, about to molest a hand puppet in G.I. BLUES (1960).

heard the mothers of some of my friends describe how crazy and "naughty" he made them feel when they were teens, and witnessed the general public mention him with a reverence usually reserved for the Pope or some shit.

The "lost" Elvis movie, NUDE HAWAII (1961)

This across-the-board worship didn't sit well with me at all since I considered Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis to each be far superior in terms of both musical output and sheer showmanship — to say nothing of being balls-out crazy in the case of the latter two — and I scoffed at Elvis' Las Vegas career, a period described so eloquently in the film HEARTBREAK HOTEL (1988) as him "kissing the ass he used to kick," so I simply had no use for an icon that I felt was an overrated, bloated has-been in a Captain Marvel Jr. suit.

Think I'm kidding? Google Elvis Presley and Captain Marvel Jr. and see what you discover!

On the day Elvis died you would have thought the world had come to an end. The news was crammed with endless footage of beer-gutted, toothless trailer bunnies, their beehives practically touching the sky, bawling at the entrance to Graceland like they'd just seen their most beloved child shot through the head by a nude-from-the-waist-down Ronald McDonald with a bloody penis. Again, I just did not get it. This was the summer of 1977, the summer of STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, a golden era twenty years after the heyday of the now-deceased hillbilly whose famous sneer sometimes made him look like a stroke victim. His music was now obsolete, dethroned by disco and the anti-monarchy vitriol of the Sex Pistols and things could only get better, right?

The Sex Pistols, aka Rock 'n' Roll Phase 2?

Well, all of that just goes to show you how little I knew in my twelve-year-old arrogance. The STAR WARS series would eventually turn to utter horseshit, the Sex Pistols fizzled out after one album — two, if you count the soundtrack to THE GREAT ROCK 'N' ROLL SWINDLE — and disco, which started out annoyingly enough, would collapse under its own weight and played-out repetition (to say nothing of all that cocaine), and not long after that MTV would start the countdown to the death of not only rock 'n' roll, but pop music in general.

MTV: the future is now, and it sucks ass.

It wasn't until my college years that I reevaluated my opinion of Elvis and finally got why he was culturally important. For better or worse, the guy brought black music to the masses, had a look and a style that were totally unlike anything that white America was ready for at the time — or maybe it was ready and needed the boy from Tupelo to kick down the front door — he could sing his ass off, and he irritated the shit out of parents everywhere while sending their innocent young daughters into fits of panty-drenching ecstasy, all of which is, as we now know, the very definition of what a rock star is supposed to do. Elvis Presley invented that shit. Let us review:

Sure, Chuck Berry was a born guitar-slinger who hauled underage white girls across state lines in order to violate the Mann Act.

Chuck Berry, about to duckwalk your little angel over to the Motel 6.

You're goddamned right Jerry Lee Lewis performed as if someone had hooked a high voltage power cable up his asshole just before he took a break to fuck his thirteen-year-old cousin.

Is that the Mummy? Holy fuck! IT'S JERRY LEE LEWIS!!!

Yeah, Little Richard looked like the first contact ambassador from the Planet of the Flaming Hairdressers and shrieked like a Capuchin monkey on a fistful of Stud City animal stimulants.

"Tutti Fruity" indeed.

And not one of them would have made it onto the popular airwaves if Elvis hadn't blazed a trail of "unwholesome, race music filth" before them, and for that I could haul his mouldering corpse from the cold, cold earth and kiss him full upon his maggot-drooling lips.

The King relaxes between takes on the set of the stag reel masterpiece HOUND DOG HUMP (1958).

And as I got older I also found out about just what a twisted freak Elvis was in real life; all the creepy shit about his mother and her bizarre nickname of "Satnin," how he supposedly wouldn't fuck Priscilla anymore after she'd given birth to Lisa-Marie because her parts were now associated with motherhood (thereby driving her into the arms of Elvis' karate instructor), the escalating madness brought on by unimaginable excesses and prescription drug addiction, the deep-fried peanut butter and bacon and banana sandwiches, and all sorts of bizarro good ol' boy shit that the tabloid media still mines and we still devour, and probably always will. Plus, don't forget the religious-cult-like proliferation of Elvis impersonators and their oddball ilk, some of whom are actually legally empowered to perform marriage ceremonies, perhaps the ultimate white trash/kitsch statement.

But the crowning moment of Elvis lunacy can only be the time when the King, allegedly doped-up out of his mind on one of Dr. Nick's pharmaceutical cocktails, barged into the White House, presented President Richard M. Nixon with a gun in a beautiful wooden collector's case, congratulated him on what a great job he was doing running the country, and asked to be appointed as an honest to Christ agent of the D.E.A., an event which, thank the gods, got photographed for posterity.

I swear on my mother's eyes that I didn't cobble this together with Photoshop. Tricky Dick meets Captain Marvel Jr., for fuck's sake! I mean, you just can't make this kind of shit up. 

So I salute you, Elvis Aron Presley. King of Rock 'n' Roll, karate black belt, master of every field of human endeavour — if you believe his movies, anyway — and total maniac. I will remember you this evening when I spin the bootleg compilation ELVIS' GREATEST SHIT,

an incredible compendium of the King's all-time worst efforts, including "Song of the Shrimp," "There's No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car," "Dominic the Impotent Bull," and his incredible rendition of "Old MacDonald Had A Farm," in which Elvis outlines how the animals on the farm had better stay in line or else he'll eat them in a variety of ways. I may also break out Turkish Elvis impersonator Emil Nargi's cover of "It's Now Or Never,"

but I'd really like to get my hands on this gem, perhaps the perfect album to play on this day of days:

Sadly, I don't have THE ELVIS PRESLEY SEANCE, so I may pop over to the local bodega and kick down a couple of shots in Elvis' honor.

THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE KING!!!

R.I.P., CARLOS EZQUERRA (1947-2018), CO-CREATOR OF JUDGE DREDD and STRONTIUM DOG

It is with a heavy heart that I pay my respects to the great Carlos Ezquerra, the Spanish cartoonist whose singular style and vision helped build the foundation of Britain's weekly 2000 A.D. sci-fi comics anthology. He's been one of my favorite cartoonists since I discovered his work during a trip to England in the summer of 1981, and since then my admiration for the man's work only grew.

Though virtually unknown to most U.S. comics enthusiasts, at least by name, Ezquerra's co-creations are internationally famous, specifically stern future-cop Judge Dredd and, to a lesser degree, the mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha in STRONTIUM DOG. Ezquerra's gritty style appealed to me due to its flavor being similar to the black & white grunginess and lived-in feel of the underground comics that I enjoyed, only his talents were applied to tales of men of action and violence, rather than depicting fantasies of era-specific wanton drug use and sexual excesses with large-breasted hippie chicks. In many ways Ezquerra's aesthetic fit right in with England's burgeoning punk rock movement of the mid-1970's, and his distinctive looks for Judge Dredd and Johnny Alpha both visually communicated something very "street" about the characters. Dredd's earliest design resembled nothing so much as some sort of fetishistic sado-masochistic leather boy, while Johnny Alpha's gear had a sort of slapdash/thrown-together feel that looked as the D.I.Y. kit favored by the U.K.'s punk rocker youth.

Ezquerra's concept art for Judge Dredd, drawn in 1976.

The more evolved Dredd, with Cursed Earth Coburn.

But while Judge Dredd definitely struck a chord with readers as of his debut in 2000 A.D.'s second issue (March 5, 1977), it was STRONTIUM DOG that resonated with me, as it was a futuristic Sergio Leone-style western set in deep space, while also serving as a tale of anti-mutant prejudice that completely lacked the varnish of Marvel's X-Men. STRONTIUM DOG's mutants were not the "beautiful people" that made up the Marvel ranks of genetic weirdoes. No, the mutant's in Johnny Alpha's future Britain were often hideously deformed and persecuted in ways that were a direct commentary on the Nazi atrocities committed against Jews during WWII, with Johnny Alpha himself being the son of the series' Hitler analog. Though blessed with relatively normal looks, thanks to his pregnant mother only being exposed to alpha rays for a limited time toward the end of her pregnancy with him, Johnny's stark white eyes marked him as a mutant from birth, so his father hid him from "norm" society and forced him to constantly wear goggles to hide his deformity, claiming they were needed because his eyes were hyper-sensitive to light. Eventually discovering that his radiation-warped eyes allowed him a sort of X-ray vision and the ability to literally see into the minds of others, young Johnny saw his fascist father's utter hatred for him, so he escaped from his home/prison and fell in with the Mutant Army, a group of hard resistance fighters from all over the United Kingdom, each bearing the visual reminders of their difference from the "norms." After years as a fighter and eventual commander of the guerrilla forces, at the end of the war for mutants' rights, Johnny Alpha put his deadly skills to good use in the only job open to mutant "scum" like himself, namely inter-stellar bounty hunting, and the rest is comics history.

The first chapter of "Portrait of a Mutant," the epic origin story that made me a STRONTIUM DOG fan for life.

Thanks to that origin story, "Portrait of a Mutant," I became a Strontium Dog booster and a 2000 A.D. fan overnight, and I'm still a devoted reader some 37 years on, and it's all due to how Carlos' artwork communicated with me.

One of the treasures of my original comics art collection, an actual page from "Portrait of a Mutant." (You don't want to know how much it set me back, but it was worth every penny.)

 Johnny Alpha costume guidelienes by Carlos Ezquerra, from a proposed STRONTIUM DOG television series that never got off the ground.

And now Carlos has joined the ranks of the honored cartooning dead, tragically just weeks after surviving his second surgery for lung cancer. It's absolutely heartbreaking and I am at a loss for words, so with that I say requiescat en pace, mi amigo. You may be gone but your creations live on.

Ezquerra's greatest co-creations share a drink between kicking ass.

40th Anniversary Edition: ELVIS PRESLEY IS STILL DEAD

Surprisingly, not a scene from a special episode of ACCORDING TO JIM.

It's the fortieth anniversary of the passing of the King, and I remember that day in 1977 like it was yesterday.

I had just barely turned twelve and was quite immersed in the history and music of rock 'n' roll, and although I had listened to a lot of Elvis Presley I just didn't get what the big deal was. I'd seen the footage of his appearances on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, suffered through a few of his (mostly) wretched flicks thanks to THE 4:30 MOVIE, 

Elvis, about to molest a hand puppet in G.I. BLUES (1960).

heard the mothers of some of my friends describe how crazy and "naughty" he made them feel when they were teens, and witnessed the general public mention him with a reverence usually reserved for the Pope or some shit.

The "lost" Elvis movie, NUDE HAWAII (1961)

This across-the-board worship didn't sit well with me at all since I considered Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis to each be far superior in terms of both musical output and sheer showmanship — to say nothing of being balls-out crazy in the case of the latter two — and I scoffed at Elvis' Las Vegas career, a period described so eloquently in the film HEARTBREAK HOTEL (1988) as him "kissing the ass he used to kick," so I simply had no use for an icon that I felt was an overrated, bloated has-been in a Captain Marvel Jr. suit.

Think I'm kidding? Google Elvis Presley and Captain Marvel Jr. and see what you discover!

On the day Elvis died you would have thought the world had come to an end. The news was crammed with endless footage of beer-gutted, toothless trailer bunnies, their beehives practically touching the sky, bawling at the entrance to Graceland like they'd just seen their most beloved child shot through the head by a nude-from-the-waist-down Ronald McDonald with a bloody penis. Again, I just did not get it. This was the summer of 1977, the summer of STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, a golden era twenty years after the heyday of the now-deceased hillbilly whose famous sneer sometimes made him look like a stroke victim. His music was now obsolete, dethroned by disco and the anti-monarchy vitriol of the Sex Pistols and things could only get better, right?

The Sex Pistols, aka Rock 'n' Roll Phase 2?

Well, all of that just goes to show you how little I knew in my twelve-year-old arrogance. The STAR WARS series would eventually turn to utter horseshit, the Sex Pistols fizzled out after one album — two, if you count the soundtrack to THE GREAT ROCK 'N' ROLL SWINDLE — and disco, which started out annoyingly enough, would collapse under its own weight and played-out repetition (to say nothing of all that cocaine), and not long after that MTV would start the countdown to the death of not only rock 'n' roll, but pop music in general.

MTV: the future is now, and it sucks ass.

It wasn't until my college years that I reevaluated my opinion of Elvis and finally got why he was culturally important. For better or worse, the guy brought black music to the masses, had a look and a style that were totally unlike anything that white America was ready for at the time — or maybe it was ready and needed the boy from Tupelo to kick down the front door — he could sing his ass off, and he irritated the shit out of parents everywhere while sending their innocent young daughters into fits of panty-drenching ecstasy, all of which is, as we now know, the very definition of what a rock star is supposed to do. Elvis Presley invented that shit. Let us review:

Sure, Chuck Berry was a born guitar-slinger who hauled underage white girls across state lines in order to violate the Mann Act.

Chuck Berry, about to duckwalk your little angel over to the Motel 6.

You're goddamned right Jerry Lee Lewis performed as if someone had hooked a high voltage power cable up his asshole just before he took a break to fuck his thirteen-year-old cousin.

Is that the Mummy? Holy fuck! IT'S JERRY LEE LEWIS!!!

Yeah, Little Richard looked like the first contact ambassador from the Planet of the Flaming Hairdressers and shrieked like a Capuchin monkey on a fistful of Stud City animal stimulants.

"Tutti Fruity" indeed.

And not one of them would have made it onto the popular airwaves if Elvis hadn't blazed a trail of "unwholesome, race music filth" before them, and for that I could haul his mouldering corpse from the cold, cold earth and kiss him full upon his maggot-drooling lips.

The King relaxes between takes on the set of the stag reel masterpiece HOUND DOG HUMP (1958).

And as I got older I also found out about just what a twisted freak Elvis was in real life; all the creepy shit about his mother and her bizarre nickname of "Satnin," how he supposedly wouldn't fuck Priscilla anymore after she'd given birth to Lisa-Marie because her parts were now associated with motherhood (thereby driving her into the arms of Elvis' karate instructor), the escalating madness brought on by unimaginable excesses and prescription drug addiction, the deep-fried peanut butter and bacon and banana sandwiches, and all sorts of bizarro good ol' boy shit that the tabloid media still mines and we still devour, and probably always will. Plus, don't forget the religious-cult-like proliferation of Elvis impersonators and their oddball ilk, some of whom are actually legally empowered to perform marriage ceremonies, perhaps the ultimate white trash/kitsch statement.

But the crowning moment of Elvis lunacy can only be the time when the King, allegedly doped-up out of his mind on one of Dr. Nick's pharmaceutical cocktails, barged into the White House, presented President Richard M. Nixon with a gun in a beautiful wooden collector's case, congratulated him on what a great job he was doing running the country, and asked to be appointed as an honest to Christ agent of the D.E.A., an event which, thank God, got photographed for posterity.

I swear on my mother's eyes that I didn't cobble this together with Photoshop. Tricky Dick meets Captain Marvel Jr., for fuck's sake! I mean, you just can't make this kind of shit up. 

So I salute you, Elvis Aron Presley. King of Rock 'n' Roll, karate black belt, master of every field of human endeavour — if you believe his movies, anyway — and total maniac. I will remember you this evening when I get home and spin the bootleg compilation ELVIS' GREATEST SHIT,

an incredible compendium of the King's all-time worst efforts, including "Song of the Shrimp," "There's No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car," "Dominic the Impotent Bull," and his incredible rendition of "Old MacDonald Had A Farm," in which Elvis outlines how the animals on the farm had better stay in line or else he'll eat them in a variety of ways. I may also break out Turkish Elvis impersonator Emil Nargi's cover of "It's Now Or Never,"

but I'd really like to get my hands on this gem, perhaps the perfect album to play on this day of days:

Sadly, I don't have THE ELVIS PRESLEY SEANCE, so I may pop over to the local bodega and kick down a couple of shots in Elvis' honor.

THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE KING!!!