If Heidi is allowed to post about Lord of the Rings, then I’m allowed to write about my passions too, and of course by that I mean Avril Lavigne videos. Her new video for ‘Rock N Roll’ is another masterpiece from the Canadian, a Tank Girl-styled piece set in the desert and featuring comic-styled artwork from illustrator Lucas Culshaw.

In a very real sense, this video puts the comics industry to shame and should inspire us all to try harder.

In a NSFW fashion!

Opening with the most perfect twelve seconds in the history of the music video, this Chris Marrs Piliero-helmed video features Billy Zane and Danica McKellar accompanying the singer on a mission to find a bearshark which has been terrorising the desert plains. Driven from diner to diner by her alcoholic dog, she gets in fights and hunts down people in spandex.

Naturally, she also has to fight steampunk lobsters and go on a soul-searching quest which questions her sexuality, ambition, and ability to blatantly rip off old Guns N Roses videos.

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It’s amazing, basically.

It takes the comic book theme but – rather than merely replicating it and rehashing past triumphs seen before – does new and different and unexpected stuff with it. It’s ludicrously entertaining, and leaves you wishing that actual comics were more like this. If there’s anything to compare it to, then it’s Gerard Way and Grant Morrison’s video team-up on the My Chemical Romance Song ‘Na Na Na Na’ which subsequently was adapted into an actual comic by Dark Horse.

If there’s any justice in this world, then somebody will be on the phone with Avril Lavigne right now, offering her a twelve-issue series which explores the world of this song. This is delicious stuff, and I hope to see the comics industry learn from her example.

27 COMMENTS

  1. Much like all of her “music,” the song is horrible. The video is cute, though. If you slow down those speedy credits at the end, you’ll see Piliero is credited with writing it as well as directing it. Credit where due.

  2. Avril Lavigne did a comic, with TokyoPop. Josh Dysart wrote it and Camillia D’Errico drew it. How soon they forget…

  3. Ha, I never thought I’d read a piece about an Avril Lavigne video on The Beat!

    It is bloody brilliant though.

  4. “(…) set in the desert and featuring comic-styled artwork (…)”

    OH, RIGHT, BECAUSE THINGS LIKE, LET ME SEE, THE TRUE LIVES OF THE FABULOUS KILLJOYS DOESN’T EXIST, AM I WRONG?!

  5. Well, “Marvel Music” still exists (to handle the music publishing assets of Marvel ), so we could see a relaunch of the imprint… but then, Epic is owned by Sony.

    Hmmm… I wonder what “Hello Kitty” will look like?

  6. looks like a True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys rip-off to me. she should have been more creative jeez.. what exactly should the comic industry learn from the video?

  7. Eddie Turnip says: “Avril Lavigne did a comic, with TokyoPop. Josh Dysart wrote it and Camillia D’Errico drew it. How soon they forget…”

    It was Del Rey, not TokyoPop, that published that Lavigne/Dysart/D’Errico comic/graphic novel/OEL manga/whatever. They do indeed soon forget.

  8. It’s your right to like bad music but please don’t insult comic creators. There’s more creativity in the cover of most indie comics than in the total runtime of that video.

  9. Avril is amazing!
    This video is so incredible, is something new, I’ve never seen it before. Avril is always renewing this world! Go haed girl, you’re the queen!

    PS: I love this post!

  10. Thought the song was awful, but there are a few clever bits in the video. Glad I saw it once. Never again, though.

  11. The only thing dumber than gluing gears on a segway in a Mad Max / Tank Girl setting and thinking it’s steampunk is calling a crappy pop song ‘Rock N Roll’. Oh and to top it all off the thing shells out for that new waterproof Sony phone.

    That’s what rock and/or roll is about right? Selling phones? Clearly that is the type of rock Avril is selling, some nice phoney rock n roll. She flipped off the camera. That means she’s this generation’s most hardcore punk rocker, right?

    I agree with the evil gas mask guy. Rock and roll is dead. This video is nailing the coffin shut.

  12. @ Aline, I do hope that is sarcasm I’m detecting. If so.. ZOMG! I totally love your post more than I totally love Avril!

    @ Kat, Yeah. It does seem like a Killjoys knockoff. Though even moreso Tank Girl. Like some really lame marketable tween rip off of Tank Girl. It’s a cheap imitation of good comics and other bands. And, hell, it’s not as if MCR is some kinda tiny indy band. They’re pretty commercial and mainstream themselves. So the idea has already been put out there. Also I think Gorrilaz had some Max Maxian vids too. Dammit. I though Zane and McKellar would be above a video with the production quality of a DBZ fanfilm and half the creativity.

  13. Great song & video (could do without profanity though). But then again, I love mindless late 80s / early 90s style Pop Rock like this. Your average comic book fan would hate it (see above comments). Too wacky & fun.

    Thanks Steve, putting her on my Spotify :)

  14. I feel like My Chemical Romance ought to get back together again just to make an angry song about this shit just like “Vampire Money” when they got asked to collaborate with a song for Twilight… Selling phones is rock n’ roll now, I’ll be damned…

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