The Last Temptation

May 28, 2001
A spooky collaboration between novelist and comics writer Gaiman (Sandman; and see review of American Gods, above) and creepy shock rocker Cooper, this is the story of Steven, a boy with many fears: girls, ghost stories and growing up among them. On a dare, he steps into an odd theater and meets a mysterious, top-hatted showman, an Alice Cooper–like figure (complete with dark eye-circles) who offers him a way to avoid his fears by simply giving up his "potential" and staying forever in a dreamy netherworld of spirits and wraiths. And after encountering Mercy, a beautiful ticket-taker in the ghostly theater, Steven gives the offer serious consideration. Cooper is the inspiration for the Grand Guignol of this demonic theater, a chilling metaphor for the seductive allure of complacency and indolence. Gaiman's story is a whimsical horror tale about confronting the fears within, and Zulli's black-and-white illustrations have a dark, emotive line, presented in a brownish, bloodlike hue that makes even a mundane, autumnal street scene seem eerie and foreboding. (June)Correction:The designer of the dust jacket for
The Road Builder, depicted in Forecasts, April 30, is Thomas Tafuri.

September 5, 2005
Gaiman meets rock star Alice Cooper in this Halloween tale that originally appeared in the early 1990s. It adapts a story from Cooper's album Lost in America
, to which Gaiman contributed story and lyrics. Halloween is coming, and young teenager Steven is scared—scared of girls, scared of his friends and scared of growing up. When he and his friends stumble onto the back-alley Theatre of the Real ("The Grandest Guignol"), it looks like the Master of Ceremonies (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Cooper) may have a way to save him from those fears—permanently. Soon, he's seeing the creepy master of ceremonies everywhere. This is not Gaiman's most sophisticated work, as he admits in his introduction. But the story borrows some strong horror tropes—mashing Nightmare on Elm Street
together with Something Wicked This Way Comes
. Moreover, Gaiman writes Cooper's Master of Ceremonies as a whimsically demented horror show host made of equal parts Torquemada and Willy Wonka. Zulli's black-and-white art uses cross-hatching and shadows to create a suitably creepy atmosphere. His characterizations are also dead-on: Steven is a convincing early teen, and the Master of Ceremonies looks just like Alice Cooper.