A Rocky Horror Frame of Mind

I've been thinking a lot about The Rocky Horror Picture Show lately. I've gone into long, not-all-that-interesting detail in the past about my inability to see the film with a real audience ... but that ought to be changing soon.

Which has me thinking about the kinds of peripheral RHPS experiences I've had to settle for over the last 30 years. I did a little browsing and came across some interesting RHPS-related artwork, as well as a download of the original movie trading cards. Enjoy!

ABOVE: The original pencil drawing, painted sketch and final proof for the Rock E. Horror card (also reprinted as Marty Gras) for the Garbage Pail Kids series. The art was by John Pound who, I think, did a little work for Marvel on the Howard the Duck magazine in the early 1980s. All roads lead to Howard the Duck.
The art above shows the process used to create this one card. Click them for a closer look.

Australian artist Ken Taylor created  two A-W-E-S-O-M-E posters for the Alamo Drafthouse’s screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Whenever I see this art I reflexively pump my fist in the air and make the "devil horns" thing with my fingers.
They were available for sale online as prints but appear to be no longer available.

 The Rocky Horror Picture Show is rather famous for taking its time to find an audience. When it did, though, it received a few collectibles more in line with a Star Wars film than an R-rated midnight movie. Among there was a set of trading cards in 1980, which someone named Red Spy scanned and uploaded for your pleasure.

Download the cards here.

Lastly, RHPS also got a movie magazine modeled on the kind made for Alien, The Empire Strikes Back and others. I couldn't find any scans of the magazine's interior, though.

Lullaby of Duckland

As I've said before (and will say again, I promise) I love Howard the Duck. It's an unreasonable and unconditional love. I even have a certain fondness for the 1986 movie and, let's face it ... it's kinda crap.

Worse, the movie's failure essentially scuttled the Duck at Marvel for a decade. Even after he began his slow emergence his appearances were scattered. You have to really be paying attention to find out he had returned, at all. I mean, really ... how many people expected to see Howard and Beverly pop up in Generation X?

The Duck has also been victim of scare reprints. The inexpensive B&W Essential trade is out of print and in its place is a color (and very expensive) omnibus edition. I'm not sure if his various other appearances (such as the Ty Templeton mini) have ever been collected.

Lost in the shuffle are the Howard the Duck newspaper strips from the 1970s. Lucky for us some diligent folks have intervened. Here is a website where you can download most (if not all) of those strips in PDF and CBR formats. Folks like Steve Gerber, Val Mayerik, Gene Colon and Paul Kupperberg contributed to these strips.

Check them out!

Dave Sim draws Howard the Duck

I've got a special fondness from the various B&W comic magazine published in the 1970s/early 80s.
I've love bronze age comics in general, and the magazines published during those years were the bronziest of the bronze (yes, bronziest is now a real word. I insist.) Without the comics code in place writers and artists were allowed to go kind of crazy. I mean, Marvel was reprinting Cheech Wizard strips in Epic Magazine. Cheech-fucking-Wizard. I'm going to shed a tear just thinking about those days.



For reasons I've never seen explained, Howard the Duck jumped from a monthly color comic to a less-regular B&W magazine. It wasn't exactly a glowing success. I've talked to a few guys over the years (including an artist who contributed to the B&W magazine and other Marvel titles) who blamed the uneven quality of the Howard the Duck magazine on editor Lynn Graeme.
And the magazine was a mess ... but what a great mess it was.
In addition to the regular artists of Gene Colon, Michael Golden and Marshall Rogers were contributions from such guys as John Byrne, Howard Chaykin, Steven Grant and Bob McLeod. There was also some flirtation with nudity in the magazine (as well as in Savage Sword of Conan) that did not last long and was never mentioned again. I can only guess Stan Lee wasn't amused.
Above is a frontspiece from the Howard the Duck magazine drawn by Dave Sim. I think it's pretty great.

The Master of Quack Fu

I love me some Howard the Duck, but the book always worked best when it avoided explicit superhero parodies.
The weakest issues in the series were parodies of other Marvel titles. Sure, “Iron Duck” and the “Master of Quack Fu” made for some great cover art, but the stories were tepid (Howard as “Son of Satan” is the exception.)
The third issue is intended as a lampoon of the kung fu craze of the mid 1970s. The problem is that writer Steve Gerber didn't really know what he thinks about the fad. Howard, of course, hates it, but Gerber can’t eloquently explain why and the book frequently contradicts itself.
The story begins with Howard and Beverly leaving a kung fu movie. Howard is clearly disgusted by the violence in the film, calling it “training for the local troops.” He also takes issue with Hollywood exploiting as “ancient tradition” for its own end as he stands on the street shouting at people. All he needs is a box to stand on with the word “soap” written on it.
Anyway, the kung fu craze gets out of control when, at a local diner, Howard and Bev see a character named "Count Macho" (based on Count Dante, who ran numerous ads in comics in the 1970s) kill an overzealous karate fan.
Early in the issue, Howard proclaims that people who enjoy violence "don't have the mental equipment to be sure they exist." So what does he do when Count Macho kidnaps Bev? He takes a crash course in kung fu so that he can fight back. Like all good liberals (and conservatives, for that) Howard's real concern isn't his own ability to process reality ... it's everyone else's. He thinks he lives in a world of idiots, which is probably true. He simply can't recognize that he's an idiot, too.
I'm not really sure what Gerber's message was. It begins as a slam against kung fu movies, but the story would have felt at home in a Shaw Brothers picture. Howard abhors violence, but turns to it the first chance he gets. Because the story has no intellectual center to argue from the issue feels like nothing more than propaganda.
"The Master of Quack Fu" features guest art by John Buscema. Frank Brunner quit after drawing the first two issues when Marvel passed on a requested pay raise he believed he deserved for working on one of the company's best-selling titles (right behind Marvel's Star Wars comic at the time.)
It was their loss ... Brunner is a fantastic artist. But Gene Colan was waiting in the wings — no pun intended — and became "the" Howard artist for the rest of the title's publication.