Dan Caffrey | Consequence of Sound
KISS has had many incarnations. Their faces have graced everything from T-shirts to coffins, even Hello Kitty dolls. One thing they’ve been no stranger to is comics. Besides having their own Marvel series in the ’70s, the band appeared in the ’90s reboot (and accompanying album book) Psycho Circus, published by Todd McFarlane Productions, and, most recently, the wholesome panels of Riverdale in Archie, written by Alex Segura and drawn by Dan Parent. Over the holidays, we caught up with KISS mainstay Gene Simmons for an in-depth conversation on the comic book industry, marriage, and why the band Chicago has a leg up on The Ramones.
You’ve always been a pretty huge comics fan, right?
I actually lived it and breathed it. You know, when I first came to America, I was eight and a half years old, and I remember one of the first books was The Brave And The Bold, and that was introducing the new Flash, the Silver Age Flash. You have to remember names like Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino. I just devoured it. And, of course, the Atlas Group, the Kirby era monsters, and the Ditko off-world things. I bought the Harvey books…there are lines of comic books that I collected all the way from A to Z, from Charlton publications all the way to Dell and Gold Key. I mean, I had thousands and thousands.