In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.
Today, in honor of Larry King, who passed away today, I'll go beyond five examples to show you a collection of comic book cameos made by King over the years. King, of course, was famous for playing himself in a number of movies and TV series, with the first prominent one being his appearance in Ghostbusters (journalists had obviously played themselves before in movies, but it really seems like Larry King and the 1980s, in particular, led to an explosion in the frequency of the gag. It quickly became a standard trope, which was not always the case).
The popularity of his cameos led to him appearing in a number of comic books, as well. Let's take a look...
Larry shows up for the first time in this comic book, by Mike Grell, Rick Hoberg and John Nyberg, where someone is killing the members of a famous rock group and so Larry interviews one of the only surviving members of the band, basically the Pete Best of the group, who was on the original demo tape that got them the attention that led to them getting signed (sans this member of the group).
And yes, he turns out to be the killer (as part of a plan where he will then sell the demo tape that he still has for a lot of money once everyone else in the band is dead).
Nomad's series (which was a delightfully unusual series that took a look at the sort of underbelly of the Marvel Universe) came to a close with this issue by Fabian Nicieza, Pete Garcia, Fred Fredericks and Greg Adams, where Nomad realizes that a United States Senator is in bed with Neo-Nazis (thank goodness this is very clearly a fictional story, as nothing like that could ever happen in real life. No sir) and so Nomad plans to take them down if it is the last thing that he does. Larry is interviewing people about the controversy involving the Senator.
And, in a way, it was, in fact, the last thing he did, as he was seemingly killed but was actually in a coma and placed back into suspended animation (and revived later by Nicieza for a Thunderbolt storyline).
This was right in the middle of an Avengers crossover, "Live Kree or Die," but Mark Waid, Andy Kubert and Jesse Delperdang put in this subplot nod to a storyline, "American Nightmare," that would follow this one, where very patriotic Americans seem to turn on the country.
Here, Larry is interviewing a patriotic General who betrays his soldiers live on television...
Note that, like a couple of other examples, he is called "Barry," just in case Larry King took issue with the usage.
One of the things that Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie and Paul Mounts did to add some verisimilitude to their original Ultimates run was to get some then-famous celebrities to agree to appear as themselves as pat of the story. Here, Shannon Elizabeth is on a date in outer space with Tony Stark as Tony is interviewed by Larry King...
I don't believe King gave permission, so note that they don't explicitly say that he is Larry King.
In this issue (by Joe Quesada, Danny Miki and Richard Isanove), we get another "Barry" usage as the news is on while talking about the serial killer who is preying on people throughout this miniseries...
Naturally, for a storyline that was all about trying to apply "real world" logic to superhero situations, it was only natural for Civil War #1 (by Mark Millar, Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines and Morry Hollowell) to include a superhero being interviewed by Larry King about the whole situation in Stamford where the supervillain Nitro exploded during a fight with the New Warriors near a school, killing over a hundred innocent people and leading to the introduction of the Superhero Registration Act.
It is interesting to note that She-Hulk is one of the prominent spokespeople for the Registration Act in this issue. She worked with Tony post Civil War, as well, but she never seemed to be quite as aggressively in support of the Registration Act beyond this issue. This is the second Millar comic book on the list, so I guess he wins for the most usages of Larry King in a comic book!
X-Men: The End was a series of three miniseries by Chris Claremont to wrap up the history of the X-Men in the future. The final miniseries was done by Claremont, Sean Chen, Sandu Florea and Ian Hannin. Sadly, this Larry King interview with Chicago Mayor Kitty Pryde, as she campaigns for the Presidency of the United States, presupposes that King was going to live into the deep future, which obviously sadly was not the case.
But hey, at least in one alternate future, King did live past 90 years old!
Not a comic book, of course, but I thought that it was worth mentioning that one of Stan Lee's cameos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe saw Lee playing Larry King in Iron Man 2....
Although, if you argue that Lee's cameos were all really just him being a Watcher (as some theories believe), then perhaps Larry King, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is ALSO a member of the Watchers! It sort of makes a certain amount of sense, right? King was around for so much of our recent history that he "watched" it all!
RIP to Larry King.
If anyone has a suggestion for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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