Horror Hospital Unplugged

DennisCooper and Keith Mayerson’s boundary-breaking graphicnovel Horror Hospital Unplugged is back in a long-awaited reissue.Crystallizing a primal period of creative experimentation for both Cooper,whose Frisk­-era storytelling is at its finest, and Mayerson,whose gritty, unadorned visual style would later explode into color, HorrorHospital Unplugged is a vital piece of underground comics craft. The moody,kaleidoscopic, and sexually charged story of would-be rock star Trevor Machine,and his flirtations with love, fame, homosexual identity, and the disaffectionof youth, is a provocative immersion in world of ambition, confusion, anddebauchery—and an crucial glimpse at the early creative achievement of two culticons.

Sexually confused and more than a little lost, Trevor Machine, teenage front man for up-and-coming indie rockers Horror Hospital, walks a rocky road toward fame and fortune. But making it to the top may mean gambling away every last trace of his integrity, and Trevor's soul hangs in the balance as he discovers the dark side of success.

A groundbreaking cult classic, adapted from Dennis Cooper's story "Horror Hospital" from the collection Wrong, Horror Hospital Unplugged is now available for the next generation of graphic novel readers. Keith Mayerson's eye-popping artwork and Dennis Cooper's brutal text combine for cutting satire. Horror Hospital Unplugged is a black comedy for the ages and a remarkable collaborative achievement.

“Dennis Cooper, best known for his transgressive novels of gay teen angst and brutal sexual longing, has adapted one of his early short stories into this large-sized, punked-out graphic novel. Tracing the early career of Trevor Machine, rock star on the rise, Cooper manages to parody the L.A. teen scene as well as all of popular culture. The superb, surrealistic drawings by Keith Mayerson bring Cooper’s descriptions and dialogue to new heights of demented parody and social commentary; it is if Antonin Artaud and Keith Haring took the wrong drugs and collaborated on a kids cartoon show. Horror Hospital Unplugged is artistic cross-pollination of the highest order: smart, shocking, and always just over the line.” - Amazon.com

“Beautifully adapted into comics form from a Cooper short story, Horror Hospital Unplugged chronicles the sudden rise to the precipice of fame (and the equally abrupt fall) of a young L.A. rock band and the funny, profane and touching sexual journey of Trevor Machine, the band’s handsome, self-destructive, gay lead singer, the kind of disaffected young hero characteristic of so much of Cooper’s fiction. But Cooper’s themes have been wholly transformed by the brilliantly inventive, psychologically obsessive, black-and-white drawings of Mayerson, in an hallucinatory graphic style that is at once expressive, whimsical and representational, with stylish elements ingeniously grafted from fine artists like Redon and cartoonists like Sempe and Arnold Roth; as well as from Japanese manga and American comics. Cooper and Mayerson have produced an hilarious satire of the record business (and a vicious sendup of David Geffen and his celebrity coterie) that is also an idiosyncratic (albeit somewhat melodramatic) queer love story that graphically details the ever-present social white noise of sexual desire, the frustration and possibilities of love, and the sudden calamity of loss.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Acclaimed novelist Cooper delivered a powerful commentary on the recording industry as well as an ode to youthful sexual ambivalence in this narrative (first published as a short story in Wrong, Grove, 1992). The work focuses on Trevor, the sexually confused vocalist for the rock band Horror Hospital. Trevor journeys through several sexual liaisons before finally receiving instructions in the art of love from the ghost of River Phoenix. Mayerson’s stunning black-and-white illustrations create the alienation and ambivalence necessary to move this horrific but compelling story along. Youthful angst is rarely portrayed as this terrifying.” - Library Journal

“Bound to reign in cult stardom status, Horror Hospital Unplugged is the ultimate generation whatevers coming of age tale of Trevor Machine, the 90s answer to Holden Caulfield. Filled with stimulating art and cynically amusing text, Horror Hospital Unplugged is a rare treat offering its readers intelligent entertainment on every page.” - Cover