My Record Store Day Haul (By Way of Strangers in Paradise, Young Liars, Dazzler and More)

Today is Record Store Day in the U.S., kind of like Free Comic Book Day except that very few of [...]

By Russ Burlingame - April 19, 2014 06:09 pm EDT

Today is Record Store Day in the U.S., kind of like Free Comic Book Day except that very few of the products offered are free and it focuses more on driving existing fans and collectors into the shops than to generating new fans (there are, after all, not that many people who don't already listen to music). And while there are some great comics that revolve around music or feature musicians (let's just go Love and Rockets, for one), this list isn't about that. I'm actually taking some inspiration from an episode of Steve Gorman Sports I heard yesterday while driving. On the radio, Gorman -- the drummer for the Black Crowes -- asked his audience to list their top five records. Not the best ever, or even your favorites...but the ones you've heard the most times in your life. The idea being that the music you grew up with might not be your favorite or the best, but it's probably what you played a thousand times while walking to school in your Walkman or whatever. In a little twist on that, I'm taking a handful of comic book bands that have made an impact on my reading experience over the years and, in celebration of Record Store Day, will talk about the musical archetypes that each of them represents in the context of the albums you might walk out of the store with.

BoojumThis was my guilty teenage pleasure. In hindsight, Elizabeth Hand and Paul Witcomber's Anima is perhaps not as great as I would have thought back then, but it was a unique reading experience to my 15-or-so-year-old self, who hadn't yet begun to explore the world outside of Marvel and DC Comics's vast superhero universes. And Anima herself was my type -- she didn't wear boob-lifting spandex and high heels, but instead looked like the girls I hung out with at school and ultimately I found that more compelling and more attractive than any of the other female-led books that the Big Two were trying to sell at the time, the lead characters for each seemingly modeled on porn stars. A creepy, trippy battle between the physical (or, rather, spiritual) personifications of psychological concepts, Anima and her giant red pal Animus were a kind of post-Sandman attempt at Johnny Thunder and Thunderbolt for a much more cynical and EXTREME age. I still own and occasionally flip through every issue, and while it feels as though maybe editorial interference killed any momentum they had built up around the one-year mark, there are some very solid comics in there along the way. Boojum was the band that represented the closest thing Anima had to a supporting cast most of the time; she rescued them early on in the solo series Anima enjoyed following the events of the Bloodlines crossover, when she was introduced.

Griffin SilverThis is the one that sticks with you -- the musical love you discover early, but keep going back to your whole life because it just fits your mindset. Strangers in Paradise remains, in my opinion, the most impressive single work of sequential art ever published in the U.S. Others have gone longer than Moore, but to write, draw, ink, letter and publish every issue of a comic that good, over that long a stretch of time, is an amazing feat. Wrapped around Strangers in Paradise like a strange symbiote was Griffin Silver. A fictional pop star, he's referenced early and often in the comic, and then steps from off-panel fascination for the characters to on-panel supporting character when Francine Peters marries a character later revealed to be Griffin's brother. Griffin always felt like the Bruce Springsteen type; he's clearly an international superstar, but his fans (including Katchoo) obsess over hidden meanings in his complex lyrics.

Danny DuoshadeThis is that too-cool-for-school indie band you loved in college -- and maybe later you realize that it's not very accessible, so you don't listen to the records all that much...but it doesn't matter. If there's a new album, there you are, and you can marvel at all the envelope-pushing and cleverness for a while before it goes back on the shelf. David Lapham's Young Liars is a bizarre and remarkable book. I loved it enough that it was one of the first series for which I ever ran a "commentary track-"style interview series upon publication, and when it was in danger of cancellation I started a Facebook fan group to console ourselves. The series holds up when I read it -- but that's rare because, honestly, it's a bit like Final Crisis or something. There are so many things going on at any given moment, and so much of it is so whacked out, that it's hard to stop reading until you've powered through the whole 18 issues and remember your name again. Hilarious and subversive, sexy and challenging, this series was 18 issues of exactly what readers always say they want from their comics and, sadly, rarely support. Danny Duoshade is the alter-ego of Danny Noonan, who is the grounding element for much of the series but it would strain good taste to call him the hero or even the POV character. He's...well, just go read it yourself. You can get all three trades fairly inexpensively on Amazon.

DazzlerThis is that awkward thing you hate to be seen carrying out of the record store -- maybe something you picked up because an ex liked it, and then inexplicably found yourself enjoying it enough to ignore the voice in your head that said you shouldn't. Not really my kind of thing, but honestly, you can't get through a story about comic book bands without mentioning Dazzler, who was basically created as a novelty character with the idea in mind that you could probably sell tie-in records to kids.

SparkshooterThis is the cool, local band that's so accessible and fun that you probably listen to it more than just about anything else on the list. Troy Brownfield's Sparkshooter is a comic about a band -- really, that's the central focus rather than (as with all these others) just something that exists to prop up other premises. It's even got a spinoff called Solo Acoustic that revolves around one of the band members going...well, nevermind. You can figure it out. The series is charming, smart and accessible -- pretty much what you'd hope for from a group of locals trying to carve themselves out a niche. You can check out the ongoing, free webcomic here.

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