I'm trying really hard to think of the comic from the Silver Age that had some famous comic artist being threatened by the Joker or something on the cover. George Perez? I've only read about the thing, not read the thing itself. Maybe it's Batman begging him not to finish the story....
I know I had a copy of a Creepy story in a paperback book (not a TPB, but a paperback B/W reprint, same size as any dime-store paperback) where the comic artist had to keep drawing a story to keep something at bay, and the last panel was the thing getting him at the drawing table, where there was a picture of the thing getting him at the drawing table, where there was a picture of the thing getting him at the drawing table. I can't remember the name of the story, although I know the paperback also included "Valley of the Gonteekwa" illustrated by Frank Frazetta.
In film, one of the best examples was Wes Craven's New Nightmare, where the stars of all the Nightmare on Elm Street movies play themselves - actors in LA - during some bad earthquakes, during which they come to believe they're being stalked by the *real* Freddy Krueger, which is a kind of extra-dimensional force that has to be confined within a story or else it wreaks havoc. It's a much better movie than you'd probably expect. Wes Craven is delightful as himself, writing the sequel he told himself he'd never write.
Earlier than that, though, there's some strangeness in The Stuntman, where Peter O'Toole plays The Director. This is less author-in-work as it is a work about the weirdness of authoring. The Director could be read as God or Satan, and some things in the film seem to be from the film inside the film... it's easier just to watch the thing. |
