Hellraisers
Posted on | December 16, 2011 | 4 Comments
From time to time I venture a toe into the waters of comics. I’m not really a super-hero type of guy and have neither the interest or energy to try to figure out what’s happening in whichever universe is currently en vogue, so much of the genre—certainly from the Big Two—is pretty much lost on me. Luckily though, my brother is well-versed in most things ‘comic’ and I’m able to get occasional recommendations, or even sneakily borrowed books, from him.
Even more occasionally, he’ll go and do something incredibly generous that makes me temporarily forget his awful, terrible, black-sheep status. Like this:
At a recent comic-con (I believe that’s what they’re called in the geek vernacular) he got me a copy of Hellraisers by Robert Sellers and Jake. Hellraisers is a sort of graphic biography of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Peter O’Toole. Since these four are among the most splendid of bastards to ever have graced this foetid planet, this gift was enough to fill me with unbridled less-grumpiness.
However, the icing on the cake was that he’d got the thing signed by the writer (Robert Sellers) and had the artist (Jake) do a little doodle of Peter O’Toole for me (O’Toole is the most splendid of those most splendid bastards, in my opinion).
There it is… Look.
Click to embiggen the wonderful sketch of O’Toole smoking jauntily.
All those times I’ve collected the brother from police stations and dubious, back-street bars with naked poultry beckoning at passers-by from the windows have been worth it.
Tags: comics > Hellraisers > Jake > Oliver Reed > Peter O'Toole > Richard Burton > Richard Harris > Robert Sellers
Comments
Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and deride my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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I too share your affection for the hellraisers of yore. Give me an O’Toole, or a Cook, or a Moore any day of the week.
Today’s ‘celebrity’ analogue are born of the purest, vainest thickery. Thugs, writ large and packaged for the hard of thinking.
These guys had class. True nutters, with a genuine framework of eccentricity to underpin their behaviours.
We don’t celebrate eccentricity any more, and that’s really sad.
You’re darn tootin’.
sometimes brothers can be worth it.
Sometimes. Ha.