Comic Review #14: Marvel Music: Billy Ray Cyrus (1995)

 

So where to start on this comic book. I mean for a Billy Ray Cyrus comic there's surprisingly a lot to unpack. I guess that best place to start would be to talk about a short lived imprint of Marvel Comics called Marvel Music, which seems pretty simple, take popular artists and make comic books about them. They got some pretty big names like the Rolling Stones, Bob Marley and Alice Cooper. They also got some people I've never heard of like Marty Stuart, Onyx and KRS-One. I'm sure someone will tell me something about them. Probably portnoyd. Anyway the 1990s were not great for Marvel and this imprint had to be closed in just one year because well bankruptcy issues. It's a shame because this comic is actually a whole hell of a lot of fun.

This comic was written as you can see on the cover by Paul S. Newman, a guy who should not be confused with the actor, Paul Newman. You see he has an S in his name. Don't confuse the two men. Uh, anyway Paul wrote for just about every single company you could think of. Charlton, DC, Marvel (when they were Atlas AND Marvel), Dell and Western. I think Dell and Western and Gold Key were all the same company. Not sure though. He co-created Doctor Solar for Gold Key and I think the man deserves his credit. Not many people can write 36,000 pages of comic books. So let's hear it for the King of Comic Books! Sadly Paul passed away in 1999. 

I also really like the art by Dan Barry, an artist who started in the Golden Age of Comics, drew Flash Gordon after Alex Raymond for like 39 years between 1951 and 1990. He was asked to take a pay cut and told them to stuff Flash Gordon up their ass. Or I assume he did. We don't treat hard working people very well and I'm certain the man worked hard on this art. It's very detailed but in the old school way of very detailed art not the Evan Van Scriver lets put lines everywhere kinda detailed. I like the old school way, I don't like the Evan Van Scriver way. You get to see all of Billy Ray Cyrus' beautiful mullet.

The two stories within this book are fun. One involves Two kids going camping at a old timey fort that is taken over by native americans. They all realize everything in the end. This one really really feels like an old Dell comic where a popular figure or character like Smokey the Bear would have a wild adventure. There's not much really to say about it other than I enjoyed the art and some of the goofy jokes. It was weird to see Paleface in a comic made in 1995 though.

The second of the stories is much better because it's a time traveling story! That's right. He and another two children (who stowaway) go back to the time of King Edward the First (I'm surprised it wasn't King Arthur) and they do all the usual knight stuff. They joust, they fight a dragon (actually just a lot of smoke coming from a cave that Billy Ray gets rid of with a fire exinqustior). They fight off some other knights. I don't want to trash Paul or Dan but it feels to me that this is the story they had more fun with. After they slay the dragon and take pictures the King forces them to stay and Billy Ray has to be his Court Magician. They get out of this by making the King believe Billy Ray has the power to bring the stars down because a fancy watch one of the kids had told them there was gonna be a meteor shower. A neat little way to end a story.

This is a silly comic but sometimes I want silly. It has some really good art and I enjoyed reading it. I can't really say more than that. I don't think this deserves to be on silly internet lists of "DUR DA WORST MARVELY COMICS EVER" and if it were up to me I'd put 90s X-Men, mostly written by Scott "Shitty Fucker" Lobdell on a Worst Marvely Comics Ever list, but I don't get to because Buzzfeed doesn't want to annoy anyone and my opinion that 90s X-Men smelled of dick and ass annoys people. Mostly portnoyd, whom I do enjoy annoying but still. Anyway, uh yeah I liked the Billy Ray Cyrus comic. Eat me.