Recently, Rocks Off was sitting here predicting the end of the world, like we do most weeks, when we got the opportunity to plug one of our favorite animated films of all time, Rock and Rule. Now, there are lots of cool things about this film: The soundtrack is awesome, the story is great, the art is amazing, and most of all it features characters based on some of the greatest rock stars we know of. One of those rocks stars is the one and only David Bowie, and it's not the first time a fictional version of him has taken center stage. Turns out he's been the image behind some pretty impressive works. For instance, that film we mentioned...
Mok (Rock and Rule): 1983 was not the best time to blow a huge amount of money on a cartoon that, because of drug use and devil worship, could only be marketed to adults. But that's just what Nelvana did with Rock and Rule. After a nuclear war eliminates humanity, the world is repopulated by the evolved forms of dogs, cats, and rats; Rock and Rule follows a young rock band as they try to stop the world's biggest star, Mok, from using music to raise a demon. Debbie Harry and Cheap Trick were used as character models, but Mok himself was a mash-up of Mick Jagger and Bowie. With his large lips, he more physically resembles the Rolling Stones front man, but his personality and performance style more closely resemble Bowie. Interestingly enough, his one musical number (see above) is actually performed by Lou Reed.
Lucifer: The devil has been portrayed in all kinds of way throughout the run of comic books, but none has really had the impact that DC Universe's Lucifer has. The character owes his current portrayal to Neil Gaiman, who featured Lucifer in the critically acclaimed Season of the Mist story arc in The Sandman. In that tale, Lucifer quits Hell to go on several adventures, becoming one of the most popular characters in the DC Vertigo line. Gaiman was very explicit when describing his Miltonian view of the fallen angel. In a 2001 live chat session Neil was asked about Lucifer's look. "I wanted somebody who looked like they used to be an angel," he said. "And Bowie in his curly haired 'folky' days - like Memory of a Free Festival time seemed so perfect for that kind of look."
