A chapter in the re-working of artistic materials, provoked by my searching for a model for the character Zn in the Bizarro cartoon I posted on yesterday, in “Cu Co Ni & Zn!”, a strip depicting Wayno’s vision of a heavy-metals heavy-metal rock band:
(#1) [from this posting, with emphasis added:] Wayno could have picked some specific heavy metal band and caricatured them for this cartoon, but he hasn’t done that here, at least not in any straightforward way: Zn is depicted as a heavy-metal acoustic guitarist who’s bald, darkish-skinned, wears dark sunglasses, and has a droopy gray mustache, and I’m pretty sure there is no such guy in real life.
I searched for several hours for candidates as the model for the character Zn in the real-life world of heavy-metal performance, but emerged empty-handed. Then David Preston commented on Facebook and made me re-think my search; maybe what Wayno was doing was not a simple caricature of someone from real life, but the creation of a fresh character, a re-worked, re-imagined character, as a kind of homage to the original. Relatable to the original, but significantly different from it. In which case, DP and I had a clear candidate for the source of Zn in #1.
(On the title of this posting: an allusion to a Rolling Stones album. From Wikipedia:
Their Satanic Majesties Request is a studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released in December 1967 by Decca Records in the UK and by London Records in the United States. … The title is a play on the “Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires” text that appeared inside a British passport.
The band experimented with a psychedelic sound, incorporating unconventional elements such as Mellotron, sound effects, string arrangements, and African rhythms. … The prolonged recording process was marked by drug use, court appearances, and jail terms by members of the band.
Its relevance to this posting should soon become clear.)
AZ and DP talk on Facebook.
— DP: I don’t know much about heavy metal, but I searched for someone resembling Zinc, and found Kerry King from the band Slayer
— AZ > DP [considerably revised]: King was my closest candidate, but the cartoon Zn differs from him in at least six significant ways. I now think that Zn is a kind of homage to King, with various characteristics altered to make the cartoon character more playful and less alarming than the brutal badass persona projected by KFK (Kerry Fucking King, his self-chosen epithet). And I’ve found a photo of KFK doing the sign of the horns [#2 below] (which for him conjures up Satan, while for the Zn character it just appears to convey an enthusiastic “Rock on!”).
Background information. From Wikipedia on Slayer:
Slayer is an American thrash metal band from Huntington Park, California, formed in 1981 by guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman, drummer Dave Lombardo and bassist/vocalist Tom Araya. Slayer’s fast and aggressive musical style made them one of the “big four” bands of thrash metal, alongside Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Slayer’s current lineup consists of King, Araya, drummer Paul Bostaph and guitarist Gary Holt, who initially joined as a touring member in 2011 before joining the band permanently after Hanneman’s death in 2013. Drummer Jon Dette was also a member of the band.
In the original lineup, King, Hanneman and Araya contributed to the band’s lyrics, and all of the band’s music was written by King and Hanneman. The band’s lyrics and album art, which cover topics such as serial killers, torture, genocide, organized crime, secret societies, occultism, terrorism, religion or antireligion, fascism, racism and war, have generated album bans, delays, lawsuits and criticism from religious groups.
(I note that long-haired blond guitarist Hanneman might be the model for the drummer Cu in the Bizarro cartoon.)
This is probably the place where I should admit that I find thrash metal, Slayer, and KFK in particular, deeply antipathetic (though that’s not the way I would frame my aversion in my everyday talk).
KFK vs. Zn. Things they share, aside from being guitarists in a metal band: both bald, given to wearing dark sunglasses, with notable mustaches, with an ear pendant (though KFK’s is in his left ear, while Zn’s is in his right ear, so that you can see it in the cartoon), and short (KFK is famously short — only 5′ 6″, but he makes up for it in belligerence — and Zn is clearly the shortest member of his rock band). But their differences, in no particular order:
— 1 KFK has ordinary white-guy pinkish skin, while Zn has light brownish skin
— 2 KFK’s mustache is dark brown, Zn’s is silver-gray
— 3 KFK has a big honking beard (also dark brown), while Zn’s chin is smooth
— 4 KFK has a ton of bright flashy tattoos (to which he’s always adding more), while Zn is inkless
— 5 KFK is a big-bodied guy, with a big head, huge arms, and broad shoulders, while Zn is more compact, with ordinary proportions
— 6 KFK plays remarkable electric guitars, while Zn plays a more ordinary acoustic guitar
For comparison to Zn in #1, two shots of KFK:
(#2) Note the big head, mustache, and beard; as a bonus, KFK is flashing the sign of horns, and not enthusiastically
(#3) Big head, arms, shoulders; all those tats; and a very special guitar
About the guitar. His guitars are specially made for him; they’re extensions of his performance persona. From the Dean Guitars website on the Kerry King Overlord Battalion Grey ($1499):
(#4)
Dean Guitars is honored to present the Kerry King Overlord Signature Guitar. Kerry King, Slayer’s founding guitarist, is one of the most instantly recognizable and revered musicians in the industry. Over the past 40-years his brutal dominating riffs wrote the history of Heavy Metal, making Kerry one of the most respected guitarists on the planet.
(I checked out at brutal dominating riffs.)
Wayno’s homage. As I said above, rather than a simple caricature of KFK, in Zn Wayno has created a fresh character, a re-worked, re-imagined — a nicer, more Wayno-friendly — rock star, as a kind of homage to the original. Discarding the original’s less savory characteristics (rather than exaggerating them), and so salvaging a vision of what KFK could have been. A lot less Slayer and a lot more Led Zeppelin.
July 14, 2024 at 10:14 am |
One of my first thoughts on seeing Zn in the comic was Rob Halford of Judas Priest, when he had the dark moustache and trimmed beard (although Zinc only has a moustache). Halford is also a singer, not a guitar player. The general look of Zinc, however, immediately made me think of Halford.