Customer Reviews

The Last Temptation

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As of right now, there are 8 reviews for this item ahead of me. Very mixed reviews. With that being said, let us continue.

Having been a Neil Gaiman fan for several years, being weened on The Sandman and Stardust, I had fairly high hopes for this graphic novel. Upon purchase, I sat down and read the dark tale in a matter of about 30 minutes. I was impressed by the fine artwork and twisted story, but overall I felt a little let down.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great read, but if you're expecting Sandman caliber work in Last Temptation then you should just press the back button now. The story was rather predictable and, I felt, was rushed into a mere three parts, or "acts," as they're called in this novel.

Overall, a fun read and a must have for Gaiman fans, but don't expect too much.

Neil Gaiman is one of the most inventive, respected and popular writers of fantastic fiction for many years now. His run on Sandman for DC Comic's Vertigo has put him in the league of other comic book greats like Alan Moore & Frank Miller...Alice Cooper is a rock legend, forgotten by many, but still... in the world of rock n roll. Alice paved the way for just about every popular "shocker" in the last thirty years.. He is the original showman, an Alice Cooper concert is a trip into a nightmare of violent acts and brutal punishments of torture, usually inflicted on Alice himself... But when Alice Cooper had an idea for a new concept album, he summond the talents of Mr. Gaiman to pen a story to bring his album to life... The story is about a young boy named Steven (a character first met in Alice's greatest solo album "Welcome to My Nightmare") who is the [brunt] of everyone's jokes...he's a scardy cat, and on a few days before Halloween, the boys come across a hidden theatre in the city and encounter a strange man in a top hat with creepy face paint (obviously Alice). The man offers one of the boys a ticket to his show...Steven is chosen and he steps through the doors alone into a nightmarish world where all of his fears will attack him and the mysterious showman will try to steal his soul.

This book is a must for Alice Cooper fans...

I am a HUGE fan of Neil Gaiman's work. I have been following his work since the early days of The Sandman. With that said, it is hard to be honest about this work. When it was first released I refused to give it a chance, due to the Alice Cooper tie-in. However, I recently decided not to be so close-minded and read this story for the first time. This story is a lackluster tale, full of allousions to the Alice Cooper album. The story itself is a Tales from the Crypt retelling of the "Faust" story. There is very little that is original or inspired. The effort to work in Cooper's lyrics holds back the plot and dialogue in more than a few places. The ending is horribly cryptic and vague. I would recommend this story only to diehard Gaiman fans.

At one point in Neil Gaiman's The Last Temptation, the macabre master of ceremonies (a perfect 2-D rendition of Alice Cooper, as drawn by Zulli) makes a most tempting final offer to the young protagonist, Steven. There's only one thing he wants in return, and it's so small that the boy will barely notice it's gone. He doesn't need it, won't even miss it.

Let me guess, Steven says, at his age already worldly to horror cliches. My soul?

"Oh, no!" replies the master of ceremonies. "Your potential."

This little exchange is typical of Neil Gaiman - always refreshing, he never falls back on cliches. It is difficult to read much nowadays without guessing motives and endings, because so many authors get so lazy. But Gaiman manages to elevate the most frequent scene in literature - that of evil tempting innocence and offering fantasies come true, all in exchange for the poor sap's soul - into something quite unique.

Gaiman has therefore, understandably, been a favorite author of mine for years. From his graphic novels (Sandman, Books of Magic, 1602) to his welcome foray into mainstream literature(American Gods, Good Omens, Anansi Boys) and film (Mirrormask), he continually impresses with his talent. Like his Sandman protagonist, the king of dreams, Gaiman creates whole ficticious worlds and actually makes you believe that maybe it's all real. And he makes you care about what his characters go through.

Unfortunately, regarding The Last Temptation, that's the end of the pluses for me. I really didn't care what happens to Steven; I never got a sense of his personality, any feeling that he was real or realistic. As a lead character, he's a bit dull. The plot itself doesn't offer much. I found myself skimming bits of it just to get to the end. I always thought it impossible for Gaiman to write something mediocre, so I'm surprised.

The artwork is fun. As I said above, Zulli is spot-on with his depiction of Alice Cooper. And who else but Alice is perfect in a role as the ultimate showman (who really does turn out to be evil incarnate)? My only beef is the choice for black-and-white, which often makes the comic difficult to read. I hear there's a color version, which I've yet to find, but doing so may make it easier to follow the action.

In the end, it's a simple, straightforward little horror tale with not much to offer. Gaiman's admitted it's not his best work, just a cheap little thrill, not unlike a trip to the carnival or eating cotton candy when we can't find gelatto.

Alice Cooper continues to entertain and amaze, even in comic book form.

Superb art and story line tie in (by design) with Cooper's "Last Temptation" album, which is now refered to as the first of Alice's three part album series followed most recently by "Brutal Planet" and "DragonTown" albums.

I recommend this read for fans of Alice Cooper, comic books and creepy stories of the heart. Not fans of the above? Read "The Last Temptation" and you will be.

But please remember, "Nothing's Free!"

In a marketing event guarenteed to drive you nuts the first part of this 3 part series was initially given away free with the last temptaion CD.

This however is the collection and tells the background story of the Alice Cooper Last Temptaion CD. The story is loosely based on Something Wicked this Way Comes (a fact acknowleged in the book (check out Stevens school book)

The Story is competantly told as you'd expect from Niel Gaiman but the star hear is Zulli who makes Aices dark ringmaster look spectacular whilst keeping the air of shlock menace about him.

If you like Alice Cooper or Neil Gaimans work this is a worthy addition to your collection.

I loved the book "The Last Temptation"! It was very interesting, but a little freaky. I would recommend this book to boys from 12-16 because some of the content is written for teenage boys. Even if you are a girl you will like this book. I'm a girl and I thought it was great!

As usual, Gaiman knows how to deliver the goods, and his stories haven't ever looked better than when Michael Zulli is drawing them.

If this was a first chance to see this story, I'd have been pretty well pleased. But this is a reprint from an earlier publication and it is in Black and White (or more peculiarly, brown and white).

If you can get the original printing, the colors were lovely. They are less so with this edition.

Negatives asides, this is an excellent story. The tie-in with Alice Cooper only made me want to buy AC music (which I did and remembered that I'm not a fan of AC at all) and go find that theater. Very cool stuff

The main reason I wanted to write this review is that I agree with a lot of the lower scores, but some of the conjecture for why the story suffered, I just don't agree with. There are a few guesses that it's the involvement of Alice Cooper that weighed this project down. I disagree.

The Last Temptation is an amazing album. Musically it fuses what was the confusing America of the 90s as seen by a teenager with the classic story of Faust. Essentially it says, "what happens when you first become an adult and are responsible for your decisions, and then you are given really bad options."

In the album itself, there is a certain resonance that the main character doesn't seem to be tempted by drugs, or crime, or just general rebellion, even though he flirts with them out of boredom. It's the temptation of an attraction to the opposite sex that seems to almost do him in.

I have to agree with one of the reviews that says it seems that three acts is way too short to tell a good story that actually follows the albums path. Many times a traditional, well trod path can still be interesting, since . . . wait for it . . . the devil is in the details. However, there isn't enough time for details.

With details in short supply, going the traditional "devil tries to buy your soul" story would look cliched, so Gaiman spins a tail of a strange showman enslaving children to perform in his extra-dimensional travelling theater, taking some of the lyrics from the album much more literally than they were originally presented. But it's a weird divergence from the actual theme of the album which then makes you wonder why this story has anything to do with the album in the first place.

I think the problem is that on the surface, Alice Cooper + Neil Gaiman seems to add up to awesome, but both men actually have very different approaches to the concept of a morality play, and the project wasn't nearly long enough for those styles to form any kind of synergy.

The resulting story is about as tied to the Last Temptation, the album, as Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum is tied to From the Inside. Or the video game, despite what Grant seems to think. But I digress.

A mysterious theatre and a charismatic showman with an uncanny resemblance to Alice Cooper appear down an alley where before nothing stood, tempting a young boy inside for a show he won't soon forget - warning signs anyone? Not if you're a character in a Neil Gaiman book!

The boy is taken on a roller-coaster ride of strange performances in the theatre and when he escapes to the real world is still dogged by a Krueger-esque Cooper who haunts his dreams and waking life. But why is he doing this? Something to do with his soul - except not. Yeah, I was a bit confused too. Cooper claims to want the boy's "potential" whatever that might mean. Why is never explained. To continue "living"? Who knows. Gaiman and Cooper don't care they're just too enamoured with their Devil and Daniel Webster style story.

And that's what I didn't enjoy about the book, this lack of explanation or credible story. It's just a piece of pantomime that tries to have an emotional centre to it but fails. The only thing I'll say is truly exceptional is Michael Zulli's artwork. If you thought the cover was eye-catching, the splash pages and the two-page strips inside are something else. The black and white inks throughout are detailed and beautifully rendered, bringing the right tones of creepy to Gaiman's mood-driven script.

But maybe it's because of Cooper's involvement that the story is a bit light and maybe there are a number of references to Cooper's songs that I didn't get because I'm not a fan of his?

Buy it for the artwork but don't expect for your brain to be tickled by the simplistic story inside.