This is the Great Comic Book Detectives, where readers submit requests for the names of comics they remember reading years ago, and I try to find them for them! Send any future requests to brianc@cbr.com! Today, we're looking for a comic that appeared in a sequence in the cult classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Many readers enjoy seeing when comics pop up in old movies and TV shows, and it becomes a whole “thing” to discover as they try to figure out WHICH comic was used in the movie and/or TV show. Sometimes it can be quite easy when the comic cover is clearly shown, like when Radar O'Reilly reads a bunch of Avengers comics in an episode of MIX (though, of course, The Avengers didn't exist until a decade AFTER the end of the Korean War.)
Other times, it can be VERY difficult, like the Captain Marvel comic that was featured in an episode of The Donna Reed Show which I could not place for the life of me, until the ever-informed PC Hamerlinck, the publisher for Fawcett Collectors of America at Alter Ego Magazine He explained to me that the comic was a special prop used for a 1950 film (in which a Captain Marvel fan club was a key plot point), and must have been lying around for a few years before being used in the Donna Reed episode.
So, let's see how difficult it was to find the answer to the question of which comic was used in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer? The question was posed on Facebook by Steven Thompson, who wrote:
Can anyone figure out what comic that guy is reading? Looks like 80's Marvel to me, maybe Hulk, maybe not. From HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER with future GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY co-star Michael Rooker. It would be funny if this was a GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY issue, but I don't think so.
Then Alex Bernstein called me to see if I could solve it, and I could, so let's get to it!
What was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer?
John McNaughton was hired by Malik B. Ali and Waleed B. Ali to make a low-budget documentary about Chicago gangsters in the 1930s. The resulting film, Merchants of DeathIt went well enough that the brothers decided to have McNaughton make another documentary about wrestling in Chicago in the 1950s. However, when the film was about to go into production in 1985, everything fell apart (a man who was supposed to sell them a large amount of classic wrestling footage reneged on the deal), so the brothers had $110,000 to finance a documentary and no documentary to make, so they asked McNaughton to make a horror film with that budget.
He agreed, but instead of a traditional horror film, he decided to make a fictionalized version of the crimes of a REAL serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas. A young Michael Rooker starred in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as Henry, a serial killer who moved in with an old prison buddy, Otis (Tom Towles), and Otis' sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), who clearly had a crush on Henry. I won't spoil the surprise, but suffice it to say that a lot of people suffer gruesome deaths. It's a DISTURBING movie, but well told. The problem for the movie was that the MPAA gave it an X rating and noted that there was no way to make it an R-rated movie, so it took years before the movie was finally released in 1989. The movie was shown at festivals to help build buzz, and it worked. It was released unrated. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave it two thumbs up.
What is the connection between the comic and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer?
The film itself wasn't the only controversial thing about the movie. The original poster for the film was created by artist Joe Coleman, an underground cartoonist who became an acclaimed painter (he wasn't THAT famous in 1986, when the film was supposed to be released). His poster was deemed too graphic, so a new version was produced. Coleman's poster is brilliantly disturbing, though.
Hell, I'm not even sure I could get away with showing it all here, so I cropped it a bit. Just search “Joe Coleman Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer poster” online and you'll find the original.
Which comic book is used in the scene of Henry, portraying a serial killer?
So, the first thing I did, of course, was to zoom in on the photo. That didn't help much, so I watched the movie itself and noticed that Otis briefly shows us the cover of the comic book…
And, by a lucky coincidence, A. I noticed that it was clearly a DC comic, because of the logo placed in the top left corner of the comic, but, more importantly, B. I recognized the logo of the series.
So I went to check and sure enough, it's the first issue from 1982. The strength of the night by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan…
One thorny point is that the second page shown is an advertisement, which is why it was difficult to identify. Here are the two pages shown in the video…
Here you go, Steven! Thanks for the request, Alex!
Well, that’s it for this installment of Great Comic Book Detectives! If anyone else has a comic they’d like me to track down, hit me up at brianc@cbr.com!