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The Doors: in the comics
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Courtesy Daniel Gise
Comic books have been with us as an art form for almost a century. Born of the pressure of the uncertain times of the depression, and a forthcoming world war, Superman, Batman, and The Shadow righted the wrongs of the world and championed and protected the everyman.
After the war, comic books took off in a big way. People like William Gaines who were survivors of the World War II came back and created comic books like Tales From The Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and Shock SuspenStories which included stories and images that gave realistic depictions of war and of the horrific psychic after effects war can have, showing things like dead soldiers climbing out of their graves. Is there any real surprise that the kids who read these magazines later banded together and mounted an anti-war movement?
Gaines was also the creator of the authority taunting, pretension satirizing Mad Magazine which has entertained millions of teenagers since it started publication in the mid-50’s. One of those was, according to his biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, was Jim Morrison, who reportedly took the catchphrase, “I’m crackers to slip the rozzer the dropsy in snide,” as his own. Morrison was also known to trace out figures from the magazine, add his own dialog to create his own comics. Ray Manzarek also may not have been immune to the parent’s disapproving activity of reading comics. In the song, I Wake Up Screaming from his album, The Whole Thing Started With Rock ‘n’ Roll he starts the song with The Shadows trademark laugh and slogan, “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men?” This may also be a reference to the Orson Welles radio personification of the character.
Rock ‘n’ Roll and comic books have been compatible since at least the mid-70’s with KISS comics. Comic books really hit their apex in the early 90’s with Jay Sanford’s and Greg Fox’s aptly named Rock ‘n’ Roll Comics series from Revolutionary Comics. Their two part Doors comics came out in spring and summer of 1991, it followed the No One Here Gets Out Alive storyline with expository dialogue, and strays from the facts a little, but they’re high quality drawings and packaging. A few a copies are still available on places like Amazon, and collector venues.
In the same time period, but of a little lesser quality in drawing and storyline is Alien Mind featuring Jim Morrison. It’s a “Star Wars” type of story with aliens abducting Morrison because he was a shaman whose power they felt rippling across the universe. The inside drawings aren’t the highest quality and the story kind of meanders. It is uncredited, I did try to get to some more information regarding it for this article but the website selling it never got back to me with any other information.
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The Doors are still influencing fans to put them in the comics. A good example is Brazilian artist Daniel Gise’s, Doors Comics. He has for a few years been committing his stylistic vision of The Doors and their behind the scenes stories to panels on his website. Gise has also provided colorful and his unique style of illustrations to websites such as The Freedom Man site.
Since their inception comic books have grown and become more sophisticated as the audience demands. Over the years comic books have been created for some of the most celebrated works of our literature such as Shakespeare or Melville have been put into comic book form. Poetry has reached larger audiences because of Poetry Comics, and the last 25 years of so graphic novels have a mass audience appeal with writers such as Neil Gaiman breaking into the public consciousness with books like his Sandman. It will be interesting to see where the next permutations of the comics will take us, and how that vision will include Rock ‘n’ Roll, and The Doors.
Courtesy Daniel Gise
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