Rock Comic Books Are No Joke

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird . . . it’s a plane . . . no it’s . . .

Your favorite pop star?

Rock-It Comics--a joint venture between Malibu Comics and Gold Mountain (the management firm with a roster including Nirvana and Bonnie Raitt)--will launch its inaugural series of pop-oriented books at the “Comicon” comic book convention next weekend in San Diego. The line’s first releases, including books featuring Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford, will officially be in stores--music and comic book stores--in September. Future planned volumes, which will sell for $3.95 for each 88-page book, include Megadeth, Black Sabbath and a series of stories about the Doors.

The fact that top comic books can sell more than a million copies intrigued Paul Stewart, manager of rap group the Pharcyde, enough to discuss the idea. But he went into the meetings doubtful about his act’s interest. For one thing, the connection between rockers and comic book buyers is a demographic natural, but the urban comics market is not so well-established. And pop comics were not a new idea, but they’d generally been done in scandal-oriented, unauthorized versions or as cheap promotional gimmicks.

“I thought it would be real corny,” he says. “But they wanted to take the group’s own concepts and make them a book. This is an outlet to get into the fantasy side of the group, to go on a fantasy with the Pharcyde.”

Jack Jacobs, who is coordinating the comic book venture for Gold Mountain, says that his intent from the start was to give the musicians full creative input, something he says that other pop-comic efforts have not done. These books are also using fully painted, often photo-realistic artwork, not the more common line drawings.

The ideas range from a fairly straight history of Metallica (including the firing of Dave Mustaine, who went on to form Megadeth, and the bus crash that killed bassist Cliff Burton) to a spiritual fantasy from PM Dawn. Jacobs says that many of the releases will also feature “bonus” CDs of unreleased songs by the acts.

“The only things I ban are rape and child molestation,” he says. “But so far no one’s even suggested anything pornographic. They’re more interested in developing more communication with their fans.”

One particular serious comic book collector is impressed with the quality of the Rock-It work he’s seen. Geezer Butler, who also happens to be the bassist in Black Sabbath, says, “Once they’ve broken the ground with these, I think a lot of bands will want to do this.”