The Doors biography in a comic book

I was very surprised to find comic books about The Doors (not done by me). Ray Manzarek mentioned in a Guitar Legend magazine interview that Jim Morrison´s life "filled tons of books, a lot of websites and a few comic books". So I guess he knows these comics are out there...

The Doors biography was done by artist Greg Fox with scripts by Jay Sanford, printed in 1991 and edited by Revolutionary Comics numbers 26 and 27 (it´s in two parts).

Front cover by Scott Jackson (click the image to enlarge):

The comic book covers all the known events through The Doors career, with some inaccuracies, but pretty good nonetheless, I really enjoyed reading it.

I found Jay (the script writer) on the web and he told me how it was done:

"I seem to recall the letterer complaining that I wrote far too much text and the artist, Greg Fox, really had to squeeze artwork around captions and balloons. I had a good sized stack of research material, mostly magazine clippings thru the years and several books, plus I had done an interview with John Densmore for some of the material.

The two Doors issues sold very well and remained in print thru about 1997 - they're fairly scarce now. Greg Fox kept drawing for Revolutionary thru 1994 and now does a weekly comic in the NYC paper the Advocate. Cover painter Scott Jackson publishes a line of comics now called Heavy Metal Monsters."

I found Greg Fox (the artist) too so we exchanged e-mails about his work:

"I am a huge Doors fan, so it was a thrill for me to get assigned that Doors comic book; I was working for that Rock N' Roll Comics company for about a year at that point, and had illustrated a series of comic books about various bands; (Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Poison, Kiss, Aerosmith, Whitesnake and several others). Led Zeppelin was the only one I'd say I was a huge fan of. And then the Doors assignment came along, which I jumped at, because they are one of my all-time favorite bands. (I was also thrilled that it was a 2-part story, so I got to spend 2 full issues chronicling the band). I wouldn't say I was overjoyed at the script....certainly, it captured the history of the band, but being such a big fan myself, I probably felt I could've scripted it better. But it worked out OK). I do recall that the Oliver Stone Doors movie was released right in the middle of my drawing those 2 issues; not that it affected my drawings in any way, as I already had such a strong visual idea of the band. But I do recall it was a high-media exposure time for the Doors, (probably the reason why the comic book company chose to profile the Doors at that time)."

Here are some samples of the second part of this nice Doors bio comic book (click the images to enlarge):

The plane to Phoenix incidentThe Doors last public appearence (in the middle of the page you´ll see a quote from Salli Stevenson interview - Salli commented: "I think it's great. I liked the fact that he used the Circus Magazine "I think of myself as an intelligent sensitive human being ...clown" quote, but that drawing's the first time I've EVER been mistaken for a man. LOL" - haha!):

Also Jay Sanford was kind enough to send me an unpublished art for the comic book, by Alec Scott:

If you´re interested, there are a couple of places where you can buy it:
http://www.sonic.net/~comix/comp__r.shtml#Revolutionary_Comics
http://www.demicomix.com/

Greg and Jay also did a series of comic strips for the San Diego Reader called Famous Former Neighbors telling stories of people who lived there. Two of them were about Jim Morrison, here´s one:

Alien Mind - featuring Jim Morrison

Here´s another Doors comic book, a science fiction story printed in 1991 by Rock Fantasy - Alien Mind - featuring Jim Morrison. There are no credits in the comic book.

In the forewords by "Michael" (maybe he´s the editor!) he explains the Rock Fantasy series:

"Rock has often taken the attributes of Science Fiction
or Fantasy to fire the imagination of it´s audience. We
thought it might be fun to turn the tables and combine
Rock´n Roll with Fantasy/ Science Fiction for the printed
page. So we´ve created an imaginary universe and peopled
it with characters in the guise of some of our favorite
rock stars."

The front cover by Nik:
Here is how the story begins (click to enlarge):

Inside the ship Jim is told "Don´t be alarmed, we will not harm you, we´ve come very far in need of the magic you posses!", he is taken to the ship´s central room. They drug him there but he doesn´t notice and from then on he starts thinking everything is normal and seems not to mind he is between weird aliens. They show him the ship´s nightlife to distract him...

The ship travels through the galaxy to a faraway planet where they are going to make Jim perform to a huge alien crowd in a large stadium. They get there and Jim starts the concert with "People are Strange"! BUT...in the control room where they are monitoring Jim´s mind the aliens see it´s going out of control! "There is too much psychic feedback! the system can´t handle..." and...BOOM! their mind control system explodes, Jim he regains conciousness and finally sees he is surrounded by aliens.

Jim makes his scape out of the stadium and jumps into a space ship landed nearby...well, I don´t want to take away the surprise in the end of the story...But I´ll tell you it doesn´t end there, they promess a another follow up comic book featuring Jim, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendryx titled "The great gig in the sky"!

I think you still can find this comic through Ebay: www.ebay.com