Tuesday, March 16, 2010

ROB ZOMBIE ROCKS COMICS WITH BARON VON SHOCK!









by FRITZ "DOC" FREAKENSTIEN

Rob Zombie is returning to comic books with a wicked new comic for Image Comics entitled WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BARON VON SHOCK?. Image calls the book "a delightfully depressing tale about the seduction of celebrity culture and its pitfalls". BARON VON SHOCK follows a local television horror host that finds his sudden rise to celebrity has unexpected results. The first issue will be drawn by Donny Hadiwidjaja and Val Staples. "This comic venture is very, very different in tone for me. Instead of a crazy over-the-top monster-fest like THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO, I wanted to create something that works more on a slice of life human level." said Rob Zombie, "After EL SUPERBEASTO became a movie, I felt I had taken that style as far as I could. So, I really needed BARON VON SHOCK to be something fresh in writing and in art." Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson said "After publishing THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO, we jumped at the chance to work with Rob again on BARON VON SHOCK. BARON VON SHOCK is darkly humorous, thrilling and uncompromising - everything fans expect a Rob Zombie story to be." WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BARON VON SHOCK? comes out on May 26, and is a full color, 32 page comic book priced at $3.99.

Anyone who’s read this blog knows that I’m a wicked ginormous Rob Zombie fan! Many may know Rob by his multiple movies, or others by his many muscial cds. Most may not know that Rob published 9 issues of ROB ZOMBIE'S SPOOK SHOW INTERNATIONAL from CrossGen Comics from November 2003 through July 2004. It was a horror-comedy anthology comic, featuring three or four stories per issue. Rob wrote all the stories, with artwork by such comics greats as Gene Colan, Kieron Dwyer, Will Conrad and Dan Brereton. Every issue starred the masked wrestler, turned super-spy, El Superbeasto! A six issue story-line showed El Superbeasto fighting to get his girlfriend back from the evil clutches of Dr. Satan! Rob Zombie went on to make a feature length animated film in 2009 THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO, based on the comic stories. I liked the comics better than the movie, but both were still wicked zombie cool! Needless to say, this Rob Zombie freak will be buying WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BARON VON SHOCK? when it comes out in just a few short months. After all… It combines three of my favorite things: Rob Zombie, comics and a horror host! A wicked winning formula! Thanks Rob!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for putting me up to date on this! I have the first five issues of Spook Show International, I bought them only cause Rob made them, I was a times a bit dissapointed with the art, but at other times it kicked ass, it was an uneven comic book in terms of artwork, but I guess it was because it guest starred a lot of different artists, some good and others not that great.

    I own the first five issues of Spookshow and treasure them in my comic book collection.

    This new comic sounds great though, Im really looking forward to it and will be making a trip down to my local comic book shop just to buy that one comic!

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  2. Glad I could give a head’s up to a fellow Rob Zombie fan, TFC! I bought up every issue of Spook Show International as they came out! I was very disappointed when CrossGen ran into financial troubles and Rob ended SHI after just nine issues. I agree with you that the artwork was inconsistent – sometimes wicked good and other times mediocre. Alas, that is the lot of the modern comics reader! Still, the El Superbeasto stuff mostly ruled and was consistently LMAO funny. I’m not familiar with either artist listed in the article, but if the cover art for WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BARON VON SHOCK? is any indication (which it almost always isn’t); the art shouldn’t suck too badly. In this case I’ll just have to trust in Rob’s judgment.

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