Radiohead stans – and particularly fans of bung-eyed God-among-men Thom Yorke – are a particularly devoted breed of music obsessive, who idolise their hero as a kind of oddball alterna-poet. Each Radiohead record is a fucking journey, even the re-releases and the weird as hell marketing promo strategies, and each show – however rare they are: the last Australian Radiohead tour was back in 2012 – is a sight to behold (I am one of those stans, sorry).
Well, a Brazilian artist who goes by ‘Butcher Billy‘ has quite literally turned our weedy anti-hero into a muscly hero-hero, through a series of illustrations dubbed Thom Yorke: The Last Action Hero.
And SURPRISE, the fake VHS covers, sporting the titles and lyrics from popular Radiohead songs, are fucking excellent.
The artist has long been fascinated by musical icons: in 2015, he first combined musos with comic book characters for Post-Punk Marvels, including Morrissey as The Hulk, Ian Curtis of Joy Division as Spiderman, and Siousxie Sioux as Scarlet Witch.
Butcher Billy’s day job is as a graphic designer, and he lists his clients as companies and media as diverse as Netflix, Black Mirror, NME and Foot Locker.
The dude sure knows how to mash comic book art with popular culture in a super arresting way. You’ll probably need to chuck him a follow on Insty.
If you wanted to know how Radiohead are doing, they seem fine: they’re playing shows in the US later this year, and have updated their website to “Dead Air Space“, a B&W picture of touring gear. Standard Radiohead stuff.
