Alice Cooper: The Last Temptation, Part Two

Alice Cooper: 'The Last Temptation'
(Marvel Comics, 1994) 

Part Two

At the end of Part One, our hero Steven had been treated to a rather creepy Grand Guignol Theatre show by Alice Cooper in his guise as the Showman.

Unnerved by the experience, Steven rushes home...

Once he settles into bed for the night, Steven begins to have a strange dream...harkening, of course, to Cooper's album Welcome to My Nightmare (1975).

Soon Alice himself makes an appearance, atop a tower and flanked by giant rats.....?!

I won't spoil the rest of the comic, but as Steven goes through the day he encounters more than a few odd and troubling sights. Alice assures him that all can be resolved, if only Steven will return to the Grand Guignol Theatre for the final show...

What awaits our hero in Part Three of 'The Last Temptation' ?!

The interplay of Alice and the rats is a bit of an in-joke, calling to mind a scandalous incident with a chicken that took place early in Alice's career:

We played the Toronto Peace Festival with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and the Doors. While we were on, somebody from the audience threw a chicken on stage. I'm from Detroit, I'm not a farm kid. I figured a chicken had wings, it'll fly away. So I took the chicken and threw it and it didn't fly. It went into the audience. Blood everywhere. The next day, everybody's reading, "Alice Cooper rips chicken's head off, drinks blood." Zappa called me. He said, "Whatever you did, keep doing it." To this day, wherever I'm booked the ASPCA is usually there, too

In his book Rock Dreams (1973), the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert features an image of Alice gnawing on the carcass of a rabbit...not something that actually took place, but an image well in keeping with the Cooper stage shows of the period, which featured dismembered baby dolls, plenty of fake blood, and a guillotine....

Rock stars, stage theatrics, and animals.......ahhhh, those halcyon days of the 70s.....  !