REVIEW: Waking Nightmare up in ‘Alice Cooper Vol. 1: Welcome to My Nightmare’

Alice Cooper: rock star, artist, cultural pop icon—these are the major traits I know about this one-of-a-kind trailblazer in the music industry. Sure, he is anything but normal (As if we are really “normal” in the first place, what is the exact universal definition of “normal” anyway?), but whenever opportunities this rocker sees, he grabs them with impunity. One of these moments is being a comic book character himself, and Dynamite Entertainment, one of the most prolific independent comic publishers, unleashes Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare, Vol. #1.
Extreme rock star
The book is a deluxe hardcover edition and collects six issues of the said run. It has a couple of features, namely two variant covers of the first and second chapters, and Alice Cooper’s first comic book appearance, Marvel Premiere #50, that is handsomely digitally re-mastered from the 1979 comics.

Readers of the macabre, supernatural, grotesque, or simple Alice Cooper fans can actually dig to the fictionalized musician’s rise to his rightful rock and roll status. Some hawk-eyed readers can connect this one with the Sandman’s first volume, Preludes and Nocturnes; that is virtually the exact premise, except the former needs children to reclaim his throne and exact revenge on his tormentor(s). This is neither as psychedelic nor as grandeur as the great Englishman’s magnum opus, but Tony Harris at least recaptures the terror, horror, suspense and the touch of humor of the hard rock legend, particularly his interactions with the pre-adolescent characters.

The last chapter can be read as a stand-alone story since the fifth part concludes the entire series. Perhaps, the ultimate one may consider a sort of tying-up loose ends to solidify the rocker’s status.

Rock god treatment
Unlike most deluxe editions I am so aware of, it possesses neither biographical entries of each of the creative team involved, most particularly with writers Joe Harris and Brandon Jerwa, and illustrators Eman Casallos and Nacho Tenorio. If this book is a trade paperback edition, I may understand some of the obvious omissions here, but even some of the cheaper versions have some of these features somehow. Though the main cover art is painted by the influential auteur, David Mack, I still feel this hardcover Alice Cooper edition deserves more than its present form. There is neither a decent table of contents nor an introductory or after word by one of the series’ creative team or even of the legendary rocker. Furthermore, the binding is quite tight due to the preferred glued type, making initial readings with this one a little awkward until a few pages after.

Talents
Personally, I picked up this mini-series and the hardcover editions primarily because of our very own Eman Casallos. Continuing his brand of rugged but detailed illustrations, and his mastery of the sequential paneling in the conventional and some unorthodox, if not experimental, ways, he loves drawing some Pinoy Easter eggs references in all of the five issues he is designated (find them all, if you can spot them). Even the facial projections are expressively grounded, though sometimes exaggerated for maximum effect. Nacho Tenorio’s part in the sixth chapter is more smooth than Casallos’s, but the latter’s kinetic and pulsating artwork are more prominent than the former’s. Both artists embrace the minimalist approach of illustrating the physiological features of most characters here, but Eman’s drawings are just scarier and creepier, especially in his quirky illustrations on some children and Alice Cooper.

On the re-mastered version of the bonus material, it cannot deny the fact how detailed and gorgeous the artwork of legends Roger Stern, Tom Sutton, Terry Austin and Ed Hannigan, plus the terrific job of Mike Kelleher of restoring this suspense-comedy-filled and breaking the fourth wall critique of anything “normal” and of “madness”.

NSFW
Alice Cooper is not for everyone, particularly youngsters and the politically correct and religious. The real life Alice Cooper is already a controversial pop icon in music, what more his fictionalized self? Surely, you are been warned here. But story-wise, this book is a solid and decent read, though some of the rocker’s iconic references can be lost to some non-Alice Cooper fans. The art is equally decent, particularly with Eman’s ever evolving grasps of the visual sequential paneling and his perennial love of sprinkling Pinoy cultural references in many panels. This time, I can understand why Alice Cooper is the so-called “Lord of the Nightmare”, thanks to this hardcover edition.