Camera Obscura: Stop The Rock

Were there any television sets in the swimming pools at San Diego last year? Did anyone assault an air stewardess on their way to Angouleme? Comic creators aren't rock stars. And why should they want to be?
05 April 2002

I've just read Mark Manning's autobiographical novel, FUCKED BY ROCK. I bought it mostly because he's a mate of Bill Drummond's. Drummond wrote the intro, in fact. Drummond is best known to the world as one half of The Timelords, The KLF, The K Foundation, and half a dozen other pseudonyms. He's been kicking about the weird edges of the British music and art scene for several decades now.

Drummond and his regular partner in crime, Jimmy Cauty wrote THE MANUAL: HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER 1 THE EASY WAY, the still more-or-less definitive text on having a hit single. Mark Manning is better known as Zodiac Mindwarp, lead singer of rock lunatics The Love Reaction. Between them, there's not a lot they don't know about the music biz, and what it is to be a rock star.

There's a term you see to describe comic creators from time to time. "Comic Book Rock star". Dopey fucking idea in the first place, and even if weren't, all it seems one has to do to qualify as one of comics beautiful people is to simply not be fat and pasty from too long in front of a computer screen.

This is not even remotely close to genuine rock star antics. While Manning's book is (probably) exaggerating a bit about the gaffer tape and the buggery, there's still a certain madness, a wild excess of lifestyle in just about every rock biog I've read, that most comic creators just don't have, with the possible exception of Grant Morrsion, who does at least seem to take the requisite amount of drugs.

The rock star game is about getting up on a stage in front of thousands of people and demanding that they love you. Creating a comic is... well, at most, it's sitting in a room with a couple of other people and banging clever ideas about. And for most creators, the other people aren't even in the same room.

It's easy to see why we want to apply the term rock star to comic creators. Comics have a (pretty deserved) reputation as being for nerds, geeks, and the kind of kids that got picked last for the football team.

Sure, they're not just for them, and they can do more, but the bulk of the industry is geared to putting out fiction to help the overweight adolescent feel better about him or her self. Even if we must grow up and leave the power fantasies behind us, it'd be nice to believe that the people creating them are still deeply cool people who lead the sort of lives the rest of us can only aspire to. It's what we want from other pop phenomenon, so why not demand it from comic creators? Especially if it'll help overcome that only-partly justified prejudice against comics.

Here's why: Pop phenomena have a short lifespan. The best ones are remembered fondly because they end. This is Bill Drummond's chief insight into the music business, and it's one I have a certain amount of sympathy with. Almost all my favourite bands are defined by the fact that they stopped, or at least got out of the rock star game (if they were in it to begin with).

They break up, they stop recording, they buy a farm in the Home Counties and write gently meandering collections of thoughts about life, or make CDs of shamanic breathing exercises, or just get away from the star business and into the business of making interesting music. This is what happens to rock stars, unless they're The Rolling Stones. And look how that's turning out.

And given the economy that comics operates in, most creators can't really afford to retire after four of five years, which is what is really required of pop/rock ephemera...

Of course, there's the other breed of rock star. The ones who weren't in it for the fame to begin with (or at least, fame was not their primary motivation). People like Mark E Smith, the man behind eternal indie staple The Fall, to pick an example.

He's found his level, and he seems happy with it. He's the grumpiest man in a chunky knit jumper, he works with big pop names like Pete Waterman (the man behind Steps, Kylie Minogue and about 50% of the UK's pop sensations of the last decade). And he gets on with making the music he likes.

So does Nick Cave. Or Clint Mansell. I'm just picking names from my CD collection, here. These people do not lead rock-star lifestyles. They're very well off, I'm sure. But gaffer tape and groupies with well-buggered arses are not really part of their lifestyle, or so one would assume. These are adults, not media fantasies. This is the sort of comic book rock star we could live with. They're not sparkling and trendy, they're not the beautiful people, they're not hip and up-to-the minutes. They're not zeitgeist-cool.

But they're well respected. They keep people buying records and filling good-sized venues.

The thought occurs: they've got more in common with successful novelists than with pop stars. They're in the business of making art, not pop. Something that'll last, that'll make an impact on the consumer; that they'll return to in years to come, and still enjoy, rather than set aside as dated.

So here's a thought for you: if you were a comic creator, which of these would you rather be?

Option one, the rock star career: a three year career of fucking hard work, and then, in all probability, obscurity, with as much chance of having nothing to show for it as having any sort of money.

Option two, the novelists career: A long career, with consistent sales, working two or three months a year (or more if you wanted, but a base of two or three months), and spending the rest of the time drinking outrageously expensive drinks in bars and generally pottering about doing what you wanted eight months a year.

No, doesn't seem like much of contest to me, either. So why are we still talking about wanting comic creators to be rock stars?

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

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