Top 10 Comics in Comics - No 7 Stephen Colbert

In anticipation of the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre's long-awaited second comic book "Goes To Hollywood" - buy it now for Christmas (NB that link will work as soon as the comic's ready) - we're looking at the Top Ten comics based on comedians. And at number 7 we find a whole host of people including the above mentioned Stephen Colbert but also...



..the cast of Saturday Night Live. Below you can see Spider-Man, sharing a 2008 Variant cover with The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert (some of you may need to consult an American or a friend with cable as to who Stephen Colbert is, and ask a nerd whatever the hell "variant" means)> This is all very big and very clever. But above we see a much more ground-breaking cover, of a comic which I'm delighted to say I bought at the time, at Forever People comics in Bristol, even though I hadn't the faintest idea who any of the people in it were. Saturday Night Live was not shown on British TV in 1978, whence this comic hails, and stars Jon Belushi, Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd were yet to make their movie breakthroughs, so I bought this comic (on import might I add, that meant it was more expensive and you couldn't get it in newsagents) and have it to this day. In this story Spider-Man meets all of the Not-Ready-For-Primetime-Players including Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Garrett Morris,Jane Curtin & Larraine Newman, along with Lorne Michaels and Stan Lee himself.

I'm not saying it's any good. Like most superhero comics of the 1970s it can be filed under the category of You Had To Be There, but by golly it was a milestone in the advancement of self-referential in-jokey post-modern fourth-wall-breaking comics-universe-crossing inclusion of real people in superhero comic books that had previously seen Jerry Lewis appear in The Flash, The Beatles appear in Batman, and would see The Avengers appear on Letterman, and Spider-Man have an adventure with Jay Leno. There is a Venn Diagram somewhere combining "comics starting to take themselves seriously" and "comics stopping taking themselves so seriously". This would be the overlap.



No 10 - Arthur Askey
No 9 - Jonathan Ross
No 8 - Ken Dodd
No 7 - Stephen Colbert
No 6 - R*? V****?
No 5 - B***? C******?
No 4 - L****? & H***?
No 3 - H***? H**?
No 2 - T*? G*****?
No 1 - ?

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Goes To Hollywood is their second comic book, an 80 page bonanza of comic strip adaptations of some of their best sketches including Star Wars, Casablanca, Robin Hood, A Christmas Carol and many more. As soon as it's ready, click here to order a copy. Their first comic book, Sock, featuring Halloween, Torchwool, Life On Mars, Primarkeval and Romeo & Juliet is still available in print and on Kindle.



SOCKS IN SPACE - The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are on tour... NOW!

Oct 5 - Farnham Maltings
Oct 11 - Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham
Oct 24 - The Capitol, Horsham
Oct 25 - Tom Thumb Theatre, Margate
Oct 26 - Canterbury Festival
Nov 1 - Ace Centre, Nelson
Nov 2 - Leeds Carriageworks
Nov 14 - Hull Comedy Festival
Nov 15 - Ropewalk, Barton On Humber
Nov 16 - Chorley Little Theatre
Nov 17 - Lass O'Gowrie, Manchester
Nov 30 - Christmas Special, Camden Head, London
Dec 6 - Christmas Special, Ring O'Bells, Bath