When I came
across this title, I was interested to see if I could use my prior knowledge
regarding Alice Cooper to help me make meaning out of this comic. Though my knowledge
is very limited, I wanted to see if reading this comic was dependent on having
a strong prior knowledge of Alice Cooper. I was aware of Alice Cooper and his
title as the god of shock rock and that his performances were loaded with
blood, snakes, and other frightening aspects of darkness. In this comic, Cooper
plays the role of “The Lord of Nightmares,” which I assume is drawn from his
album “Welcome to my Nightmare.”
In this
comic, Lucius Black, a man looking to sign new music acts, controls Cooper into
doing his dirty work by way of a contract that cannot be broken. Cooper doesn’t
remember his past life as rocker, until he finds himself in the atmosphere that
helps jolt his memory. While watching a boy band perform in hopes of signing
them into a contract for Black after the show, Cooper’s memory starts coming
back to him. We can tell this is happening within the comic because of how the
speech is presented to us. It is not in regular word balloons like it has been
through the comic so far, instead, they are boxes of narration that make the
reader assume he is thinking these thoughts in his head – they are the memories
coming back to him.
This story
transcends the real world. Even though Cooper’s interactions with Black in the
real world seem to be the realist, we see that Black, himself, uses monsters to
help control bands into signing with him. To go further, not only do we
see Cooper, the rocker, in his interactions with Black, but we also see Cooper
as “The Lord of Nightmares,” a supernatural role he has acquired which puts him
in charge of controlling our darkest dreams. However, his role as the “Lord of
Darkness” is put on hold when he goes missing from this realm and gets confined
to the one with Black.
The colouring
in this comic mimics the darkness that comes from both Alice Coopers real
performances as a rocker outside of the story, as well as his new role within
the comic as the “Lord of Nightmares.” It begins with an image of an ominous
and gloomy looking tower – which is the place they refer to him as “The Lord of
Nightmares,” however, it is an “unattended” realm because Cooper is stuck in
the world of Lucius Black. This first page is full of dark colours and lines
that bleed into each other to give the mystic effects. There are two panels in
the lower right corner that are bordered by lines that look like spider webs.
This is fitting since the story is telling us the realm is “unattended” and
spider webs tend to become apparent in places that haven’t been visited in
quite some time. The second page introduces us to Cooper’s character, clearly looking
beat up and not all there. The snake that is present is another way to
illustrate the gloominess and darkness of this realm. The snake is used as an
image of Satan (serpent). With a little research, I found that this particular
snake, Kachina, was actually a real figure; Alice Cooper had a boa constrictor
named Kachina he would bring on stage.
When we enter
the story of Lucius Black and Cooper in the real world, the paneling is a lot
more divided on the page compared to the panels in the Nightmare world, where
they all bleed together in darkness. The panels are now chopped up and divided
with black borders. The colours used are also brighter.
We are
introduced to a side story of a little girl and boy at a garage sale, which
seems confusing at first, but we then realize that the boy buys an Alice Cooper
album. The word balloons in this scene are intriguing. When the boy speaks, his
word balloons are white with black writing, but when the person putting on the
garage sale speaks, his word balloons are black with white writing. This could
be perhaps to help the reader distinguish between the two different characters,
however, when we go to the last page of this scene, we see that the seller is actually
very gloomy and evil looking. This can account for his black word balloons, and
also makes us wonder if this album will cause problems for the boy further in
the story, especially after we read what the seller says: “fear what’s to
come.” This page also has a black background, instead of white, or bright and
colourful like the rest, putting further emphasis on the horror this character
brings.
Further on in the story, the little boy
and girl play the Alice Cooper record backwards. This evokes a satanic feel, as
records used to be said to have satanic messages if you played them backwards.
When the children do this, the two stories come together. First, we see Cooper
re-enter the realm of nightmares, which we can only assume was done by the
children playing the record backwards. Then, in the last page, Cooper is seen
in the children’s bedroom, which can only mean that the record brought him out
of his horrible life with Black and back into his realm of nightmares. In the
very last panel, Cooper is seen on the child’s bed saying “…you needed
something?” which makes us wonder what he is doing there. If Cooper is the
“Lord of Nightmares,” why does it seem like he is about to help the boy with
something? This cliffhanger will have to be solved in the second issue.
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