ROCK N' ROLL COMICS: DEF LEPPARD, 1989

PUBLISHER: Revolutionary Comics

ISSUE: Volume 1 Number 5, 11/1989 (two printings)
ALL IMAGES: link

MY GRADE: C

MY THOUGHTS: I'm not at all familiar with comic books and this one appears to have six different stories, two of which have nothing to do with Def Leppard. Upon reading about Rock N' Roll Comics, I see that at least one of those last two comics are in every issue. Really only two of the stories are good but this is still worth owning. The faces are pretty awful and most look nothing like the members. I love seeing the two-page ads in the center and seeing how inexpensive t-shirts and posters were, and the shipping was only $2 per order!

Owner of the company and writer of the stories, Todd Loren, was murdered in 1992 and it's still unsolved. Search his name at Youtube.

ROCKET TO THE TOP, a play on the Def Leppard song Rocket from Hysteria, is the first story and is a fictional biography of the band and is pretty good.

DED LEPERS is the second story and it's awful. It's about a Def Leppard "Golden Greats" album of hits that's being sold on television. It comes with a Rick Allen doll which has a removable arm that's holding a drumstick. Then it turns into a story about Margaret Thatcher trying to get tax money out of them. 

WHERE THERE'S A WILL, the third story, tastefully done about drummer Rick Allen losing his arm in 1984.

DEF LEPPARD: HYSTERIA is the forth story and it's odd and stupid. A bunch of famous actors/horror film characters and musicians are hanging out with the band members after a concert (I guess.)

STAN BACK is a comic strip that's in all issues and is one page long. Some guy calls the Heist Corporation Funding Group. He gets a recording instead of a live person so he shoots the phone. The bullet goes through it and comes out of the phone of the Heist Corporation.

TWISTED IMAGE is a parity of film critics Siskel and Ebert but they're called Siskull and Eggbert and some nonsense about a nuclear holocaust.

THE DOLL FACTORY by Elizabeth Macneal

PUBLISHER: Picador, 5/2019

GENRE: Historical Fiction

SETTING: England, 1850

MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment – forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning.

When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love. But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening . . .

MY THOUGHTS: I enjoyed this even though it was slow-moving and nothing happened until the end. It wasn't as suspenseful as I'd expected and hoped. I disliked the ending more than I liked it. Timespan is about two years.

I really liked black-haired 39-year-old Silas Reed and his disturbed mind and bad deeds. We got a little background information on his childhood but I'd have liked some, any at all, about his adulthood. We know his occupation but that's it. He's odd and reminds me of the lead character in Perfume. I wish he'd have had more interaction with Iris. I think he met her twice briefly.

Iris Whittle is twenty-one and has a twin sister, Rose, who was disfigured by smallpox a few years previous. They have red hair and green eyes. Rose is jealous, and judgmental, of Iris and doesn't want to be apart from her. Iris has a twisted collarbone and Silas is fascinated by it. I really thought Rose would try to make Iris's life miserable once she quit working at the doll factory but sadly, she didn't. I also thought the same of their pill-popping, laudanum sipping boss, Mrs. Salter. She's abusive (pinches the backs of their arms) and more could have been done with her character. I'm not sure why their parents were in the story. We met them once and I think Iris once got a letter of disapproval from them once. I just didn't see the point of mentioning them at all, especially since they didn't live at home. Iris's love interest, Louis, is bland as can be. I thought he'd be a bad character for some reason but he wasn't. 

I like the street urchin Albie, who's age was never given. He's a good person. He was suspicious of Silas from the start but was given no reason for feeling that way. The author should have given him a reason. I don't like that he had only one tooth because that's the only adult tooth that grew in. I thought that was ridiculous. I assume his sister is either the blond or "white-haired" woman at the end of the story who had a child and worked for Iris or Rose since the author made a point to tell us she was blond the last time she was mentioned. 

So, the book was interesting, albeit a bit boring, and so much more could have been done with every single character. I don't think any of them were well developed. The title doesn't suit this either since nothing happens at the doll factory, which seems more like a shop anyway.

DEF LEPPARD: THE DEFINITIVE VISUAL HISTORY by Ross Halfin

PUBLISHER: Chronical Books, 5/2011
PURCHASE: link

READ FREE: link
IMAGES: link

MY GRADE: A

SYNPOSIS: Def Leppard's unstoppable, anthemic hard rock has earned it sales of more than 65 million albums worldwide and a legion of dedicated fans. This fully authorized visual history of the band follows them from the new wave of British heavy metal to their massive Pyromania and Hysteria albums to the sustained power of their records and tours today. 

Legendary rock photographer Ross Halfin has been shooting Def Leppard since 1978, and his candid and definitive pictures have helped capture and shape the image of the band. Def Leppard includes more than 450 classic and unseen photographs, along with text from Halfin and stories and commentary by the band members and others.

MY THOUGHTS: This is a heavy hardcover with thick glossy, mostly full color photos that go in order by albums. Some have captions, most don't. It measures 11.25"x.75"x9.25". There's a two-page intro from Joe and one to two pages each from the other members where they reminisce. Journalist Paul Elliott and tour manager Malvin Mortimer get a couple pages each too, as does Ross Halfin himself. Both Malvin and Ross are interviewed in the Classic Albums: Hysteria television episode from 2002. Malvin is shown in the DVD bonus features. It's real fucked up that former member and guitar player Pete Willis didn't get so much as one paragraph to give his thoughts considering he cowrote some of their best songs. At least there are plenty of photos of him with the band in here. I like the pre-Adrenalize era photos (and music, been a fan since childhood, 1987) best. 

Ross said this about Steve, "The last time I saw Steve was at Hammersmith Odeon. He was odd; it was like talking to someone I didn't know. He kept asking if I had any cocaine. His father was with him, someone who seemed to be jealous of his son and instead of looking after him, encouraged him to drink. That's how I saw it, and it's sad..."

This is a photo book so not a lot can be said other than I enjoyed the photos and would have liked more text. I liked hearing what the band members had to say and would have liked more of that.

My favorite image from inside the book is below: