Formed a (Fictional) Band, Part 1 - The Comics

I was thinking about Scott Pilgrim the other day (I think about Scott Pilgrim a lot, often at awkward and inappropriate moments) - specifically, I was thinking about how awesome the name of Scott Pilgrim's band is -- Sex Bob-Omb. Not only is the name of the band awesome, referencing the classic Super Mario 2 character, but the portrayal of the band as a noisy group of indie kids thrashing their instruments just for the joy of it is awesome too.


Then I realized that the other band most prominently featured in Scott Pilgrim - the Clash at Demonhead - is a great fictional band in their own right. Aside from featuring Scott's evil ex-girlfriend, Envy Adams, as the lead singer, they are a perfect portrait of an indie band that has just enough success to be pretentious jerks but not enough to be truly famous or to really have "made it" in any meaningful sense. Just looking at them, you can imagine what they would sound like - probably kinda cool and edgy, but nearly as cool and edgy as they think.

This thought then led me to a thought about fictional bands in general, and how there seem to be a lot of them in movies and television, and to some extent even music (I'll explain in a later post the criteria to be a fictional band within music itself, because that area does get quite tricky), but not all that many I can think of within comics. While Phonogram is a music-centric work, it focuses on fictional characters' interactions with real music, not a fictional set of musicians. Nor do many of the other comics dealing with music really posit an entirely new band - they usually just reference, or even feature, an existing real-world band - KISS comics, anyone?

There are a few notable examples, however. The most notable one in the super-hero genre has to be Dazzler. While not technically a band, she was a musician, and even had her own series for a while. When she became a bit character in the X-Men universe, she also interacted, along with the other X-Men, with Lila Cheney, a character who fronted her own intergalactic band that toured the stars. While these examples are notable, they aren't notable for the quality of comics, as I've always found anything featuring Dazzler to be pretty abysmal.

Moving on, there's also Mike Allred's Red Rocket 7, an alien clone who becomes a rock star and provides a gateway for Allred's exploration of the history of pop and rock music. This limited series is well-regarded by many (though I've met some Allred fans who believe it is his worst comics work), but I must confess I've never checked it out and don't have too much of an opinion on it. It looks pretty cool though, and I like the concept behind it.


Finally, I'll move on to my favorite - Danny Duoshade from David Lapham's sadly cancelled Vertigo series, Young Liars. Young Liars was just about as rock and roll as a comic book can get, capturing the possibility and energy of rock and punk music perfectly. It also didn't shy away from the dark aspects of the culture, and featured its share of paranoia and drug binges. One of the most interesting aspects of the book was that it was hard to tell from issue to issue what was really real and what was a lie. Was the main character Danny just a loser, or was he really the ultra-famous rocker Danny Duoshade. Which aspect of the character was real and which was a facade? Danny and his fictional band, coupled with the entire format and story of Young Liars, is probably the most successful portrayal of music on the comics page I've ever come across (each issue even listed tracks for recommended listening by Lapham).