Tales from the Inside
Or, the Geezer Geek Goes to Hell
Halloween has come and gone again. I don’t dress up much these days, though I utilized my iPatch eye patch again for a while.. Heh! One time in a particularly lazy
year, I simply applied Alice Cooper make-up. Confusing the effect, I wore a Genesis Invisible Touch concert t-shirt. I was just in a weird mood that night! But Halloween is a night for weird, yes? I remember a drunken group hug/dance/sing along to Europe’s “Carrie,” and I think I should just avoid talking about music for the rest of this column.
Nah!
Everybody knows “School’s Out,” but my Alice Cooper record collection began with the single “I Never Cry” from his second solo album. Alice first headlined a comic book with Marvel Premiere #50, in a tale loosely based on by his 4th solo effort, 1978’s From the Inside. This odd little effort inspired me to buy said album, a concept album which remains one of his best, and with that my appreciation for the theatrical and frequently thoughtful artist began in earnest.
From the Inside, crafted by Alice and Bernie Taupin, contained the song (and single) “How You Gonna See Me Now?” which was his fourth and – for a time – his final ballad, following “Only Women Bleed,” “I Never Cry,” and “You & Me.” The album is vaguely inspired by his fellow inmates when he first checked in to a hospital to deal with his alcoholism. Sadly, it was not his last effort before eventually beating it.
Anyway, the comic was co-written by Alice Cooper with Marvel Comics staff writers Jim Salicrup, Roger Stern, and Ed Hannigan, and illustrated by Tom Sutton with Terry Austin. It is pretty funny, if one of the most bizarre things Marvel ever published. Since that 1979 issue, Alice has also been featured in an unauthorized biographical comic, an issue of Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror, and a few others over the years.
In 1994 he teamed up with author Neil Gaiman to create the concepts for what would become The Last Temptation, which featured the return of the Steven character from Welcome to My Nightmare and Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. Alice co-wrote the brilliant songs with his people, and Neil crafted an exquisite 3-issue comic series with artist Michael Zulli. Some copies of the CD were even sold in a (poorly-designed) package with the first issue. The comic series has been collected in paperback and hardcover, in both color and black & white versions over the years.
(I had dreams of adapting Welcome to My Nightmare into a graphic novel, once upon a time. I have several old sketches with thumbnail concepts for it in a sketchbook somewhere.)
Dynamite Comics has released the first two issues of their newest Alice Cooper series, with Alice going up against ol’ Scratch himself. It’s off to a good start, and I look forward to the rest of the series.
Alice Cooper has released 29 studio albums since 1969’s Pretties for You (this includes the 7 with the original band Alice Cooper), plus 2 as part of The Hollywood Vampires. His usual mix of the bizarre, horrific, and grand guignol often peruses more serious subjects. “Dead Babies,” from 1971’s Killer, is anti-child abuse, not (as frequently assumed) a twisted celebration of them. Some of his songs are simply macabre fun as his Alice character alternately tempts and is tempted.
Alice is generally a good guy, his lamentable recent comment pertaining to transexual persons to the contrary. As an ally, I wish I could sit down and talk to him about it. Given time I’m fairly sure he’ll come to genuinely regret his misunderstanding. I don’t give him a pass, but he’s too good to completely condemn for an offhand comment, no matter how assholish. YMMV, of course.