‘King of Pain’: The comic book legend inspired by Sting
At the peak of The Police, Sting was one of the most famous musicians in the world. There’s an argument to be made that he was one of the most famous people in the world, period. Let’s be real here, this was a role the man born Gordon Sumner was born to play. The guy just looks like a star. A man with cheekbones like that can’t be confined to Tyneside jazz clubs his entire life.
It’s part of the reason that The Police were considered a bit of a joke when they first started out. They just came across like Pop-Tarts desperate for a shot at the mainstream. This is despite their muso credentials being as legit as they got, all three of The Police were generational at their respective instruments. However, people have always judged people on vibes alone, and the vibes of Sting and Co were that they wanted to be celebrities.
In fairness to their detractors, The Police didn’t do themselves a whole heap of favours. The reason they got their bleached blond locks was because the trio took a gig playing a punk band in a Wrigley’s chewing gum advert, after all. The moment Sting got famous he started poking his nose into acting, with roles in Quadrophenia and, infamously, Dune. However, can you blame him?
When you have a look so sensational that comic artists start cribbing it to make a character, that’s one thing. However, when that character becomes one of the most iconic and beloved in the history of the medium, at least partially due to how astonishingly cool he looks? That’s when you know you’ve got star power. We know this because it happened in real life.
Which comic legend did Sting inspire the look of?
When comics legend Alan Moore took the job of rescuing the failing DC comic Swamp Thing in 1985, part of his changes to the book were the introduction of a character to act as a sort of “supernatural adviser” to the title character. When conceptualising the character, the artists assigned to the book, Stephen R. Bissette and John Totleben, were huge fans of Sting and The Police and wanted to draw a character like their hero.
Thus, a character took shape. One that was given Sting’s slight build, high cheekbones, green eyes and most importantly, his shock of tousled, swept back blonde hair. Moore added in his charming, con artist personality and ever-present cigarette. Sting’s own Newcastle brogue was swapped out for Scouse, another northern English portside accent. Once the trench coat was added, the image was complete.
Out of a desire to draw, Sting had come to John Constantine, one of the most compelling figures in the last four decades of comics history. As if the look wasn’t tribute enough, the art team assigned to the book decided to give Sting another shout-out in Swamp Thing #51, where Constantine is introduced standing on the bow of a ship. One whose bow gives away its name, ‘The Honourable Gordon Sumner’. I guess you can’t give someone too much credit when their face does half your job for you.
Sting himself would get in on the act recently, when he wrote a foreword to the 30th anniversary hardcover collection of the Hellblazer comic John Constantine starred in. In an actually pretty charming example of buying into the story wholesale, Sting told the story of John being his twin brother, who strangled the pop star in the womb. Rather than get born into the world of DC comics, he was instead reincarnated into a parallel universe, ie, ours.
Tell you what, maybe our Gordon had just as much of a place in comics as his so-called brother.
