Fifty years in the past, The Rocky Horror Image Present burst onto the large display screen in an explosion of camp rock, B-movie sci-fi nonsense and stockings and suspenders. Late-night screenings and viewers participation was far more than a film: a cult phenomenon that lives on as we speak.Regardless of that legacy, it by no means grew to become a franchise, though Richard O’Brien made Shock Remedy as an offshoot. However now an formally licensed graphic novel continues the story. Written by Magdalene “Mags” Visaggio, the author of Girlmode, and with artwork work by X-Males Limitless illustrator Noemi Vettori, Rocky Horror Present: Bride of Rocky Horror sees Brad and Janet get sucked into the time warp once more.With society so completely different as we speak, I requested Mags how she approached the duty of adapting Rocky Horror to comedian type. The interview is illustrated with pages from the graphic novel, which is being printed by Bit Bot Media.
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(Picture credit score: Bit Bot Media)Fifty years on from the film, why is The Rocky Horror Image Present nonetheless so standard?Is that this a trick query? Why is Star Wars so standard as we speak? Rocky Horror endures as a result of Rocky Horror is enjoyable as hell, to start with, and since it by no means actually ended. It was one thing larger than itself the exact same approach as one thing like Star Wars: by transferring off the display screen and into the true world.I don’t imply that in a flippant approach, both, or in some hazy metaphorical one about, I don’t know, the way it lives in our hearts or some dumb shit like that. It moved into the true world by turning into one thing individuals did and never simply one thing they appreciated. That’s the formal definition of a cultus, which is the place we get the phrases cult and tradition. A neighborhood bounded by commonality that renews itself by retelling the story.
(Picture credit score: Bit Bot Media)Richard O’Brien’s plans for a direct movie sequel by no means got here to fruition. Why do you assume a graphic novel is the correct format to proceed the story?Every day design information, evaluations, how-tos and extra, as picked by the editors.I don’t. Full cease. It’s a graphic novel as a result of I’m a graphic novelist and that’s what I used to be employed to make, however Rocky Horror ain’t Rocky Horror with out the music.Comics are their very own factor, and perhaps I do the ebook a disservice by evaluating it a lot to a totally completely different medium that permits for utterly completely different species of expression. I at all times wish to say that comics needs to be comics, and never attempt to be one thing else, and right here I’m providing you with a comic book ebook that’s additionally a musical? I don’t know. It’s Rocky Horror. What else was it presupposed to be?I ask myself typically, effectively, how would Grant Morrison strategy this? They usually’d make one thing that was consultant of the spirit of Rocky Horror that performed to the actual strengths of comics in methods I believe might need made it unrecognizable. I didn’t need to make it unrecognizable.I needed it to be Rocky Horror. And Rocky Horror is glam rock. So…yeah. No, I don’t assume that is the most effective format for a sequel to that individual film, however I jumped on the probability to do one thing new with these characters and these concepts and these horrible, fantastic issues that occur after they collide.
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(Picture credit score: Bit Bot Media)Given the unique film’s cult following, how did you stability respecting the unique whereas doing one thing new?I didn’t. Please don’t assume I’m making an attempt to be troublesome along with your beautiful questions! However Rocky Horror is, by far, my favourite film. I’ve seen it far more typically than every other, and it’s not an in depth contest. I do know it inside and outside. So I wasn’t apprehensive about respecting it. The reality is that my take isn’t going to fulfill everybody, as a result of nothing can. All I might do was the identical factor Richard O’Brien did: inform the story I needed to inform.As a lot as I might, I attempted to channel O’Brien’s distinctive voice, however that’s clearly not attainable; he’s sui generis, irrepeatable. I attempted to maintain the camp, the enjoyable, the brazen goofiness of its ostensible “science fiction” trappings, that whimsically free plotting the place nothing actually occurs nevertheless it’s all taking place so quick you don’t even discover till it’s over and most everyone seems to be lifeless. God, what a present! It by no means stops, not for one goddamn second. It by no means provides you time to sit down and give it some thought an excessive amount of.However I’m not Richard O’Brien, and as a lot as I attempted to seize the tone of his (and Jim Sharman’s) insane genius, it was Mags Visaggio on the keyboard this time. I’ve completely different preoccupations, not the least of which is that O’Brien is forty years older than me. He grew up watching all these previous B sci-fi motion pictures within the fifties and sixties.However I grew up within the nineties; my expertise of sci-fi is completely different, my expertise of queerness is completely different. I’ve a particular schooling in literature, philosophy, and theology that O’Brien doesn’t as a result of he went to completely different faculties and studied various things. I grew up taking part in video video games. He didn’t. So, it doesn’t matter what, this was by no means going to be Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror.
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(Picture credit score: Bit Bot Media)I’m acutely conscious that that is the one licensed sequel to Rocky Horror, and that no person has been allowed to play on this sandbox earlier than. There’s not a long time of tie-in books, or an entire Rocky Horror Expanded Universe. That is the primary time a special authorial voice has ever had the reins. And I acknowledge that some individuals may see that as a duty. I don’t. I see it as an opportunity.Fifty years of Rocky Horror. That’s fifty years the place it has been a part of the tradition it was responding to. Fifty years of historical past for LGBTQ individuals. AIDS occurred. And if I’m the primary one that will get to do one thing additive to Rocky Horror, one thing actually really additive, which means I’m the primary one that will get to face on the opposite aspect of these fifty years and take into consideration what this type of story is even for as we speak.The world is a wildly completely different place, and a lot of what Rocky Horror treats as taboo deliciously ignored is now simply day by day life for tens of millions of peculiar folks. So actually, I needed to do a Rocky Horror about what occurred after Rocky Horror, each for Brad and Janet and for the broader world at giant.Brad and Janet finish that unusual night time within the fort having been pressured to confront issues about themselves that will have demanded some type of response, some type of selection about what to do with what they realized. That meant fascinated with, okay, what did they be taught? What precisely occurred to them there, globally talking?
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(Picture credit score: Bit Bot Media)Now, I’ve written about this at appreciable size in Feminist Press’s Absolute Pleasure: Queer Views on Rocky Horror, and everybody ought to go learn that entire marvelous assortment, so I’ll be transient: Janet experiences the occasions of that night time as liberation, of a coming-into-herself and her sexuality.However not Brad. By no means Brad. Brad stared into the darkish eyes of want and noticed one thing that terrified him. What I posit is that Janet selected to be trustworthy about what occurred, and Brad selected to not.This destroyed their engagement, and now seven years have handed. Time has accomplished its work on each of them. So after they get sucked again into the ol’ Time Warp, effectively, these aren’t the identical two children. Their time there modified them, because it modified all of us who discovered it on the proper or improper second.We’re there any challenges in adapting Rocky Horror to a comic book format?It’s not a very advanced story – that’s a part of what makes it work so goddamn effectively. It’s a inventory plot with inventory characters filtered by way of a particular type of expertise that appears quite a bit like insanity.Brad and Janet are simply the All-American Couple. Brad’s tall and square-jawed and appears quite a bit like Superman. Janet’s smaller and mousy and has this delicate voice and she or he’s at all times hiding behind her man, a minimum of at first. Customary stuff.They get trapped in a bizarre fort with a mad scientist with a mad creation. A inventory plot, like I stated, and straightforward sufficient for a comic book ebook. I didn’t need to simply remake Rocky Horror, however I needed to maintain the recognizable form of a inventory plot, and so: Brad and Janet are kidnapped by aliens who need to do bizarre experiments to them. Simple peasy.And the themes – forbidden data, taboo sexuality, insanity, violence, homicide – these are comedian ebook requirements. Comics will not be some distinctive medium that may solely deal with a lot; it’s been a thriving medium for over a century, and it’s endlessly plastic. It can provide us The Yellow Child and Moebius, WicDiv and Blankets. So there wasn’t a problem there, both.Truthfully essentially the most troublesome factor was capturing the madcap pacing. It’s virtually screwball, it strikes so quick. Nothing lingers. Frank ushers them from room to room with out a lot in the way in which of intention or course, after which a bunch of individuals die. I struggled fairly a bit with plotting this free, and I’m nonetheless just a little apprehensive the tip result’s too structured, too…formally coherent to essentially fly the way in which Rocky Horror does.Have you ever ever seen a TV present the place we’ve to see a “dangerous drawing?” Like a child’s drawing? Besides the one who drew it was clearly an grownup with actual creative coaching, and so it doesn’t seem like a child did it, and it simply appears to be like bizarre and improper and silly. Rocky Horror is simply relentless in its ahead movement although it’s by no means completely clear why any of this stuff are taking place.The reality is that it doesn’t matter, and that it will get in the way in which of what the present actually is doing: placing Brad and Janet by way of the emotional and sexual ringer to see what occurs. God it’s so insane. There’s incest. Cannibalism. Shock after shock after shock. Eddie exhibits up and instantly will get killed. Absolute pleasure? Extra like absolute insanity.I’ve received all this silly coaching in literature and craft and I needed to struggle so a lot of these instincts tooth and nail to make it really feel proper, which meant draft after draft after draft, stripping the plot down additional and additional till it moved with the identical loopy vitality.You may order Rocky Horror Present: Bride of Rocky Horror through Kickstarter.For extra inspiration, see our latest interview with ebook cowl creator Dan dos Santos concerning the significance of sketching.
