While metal is alive and well, records aren’t selling what they used to due to a variety of factors (but that’s another post for another day). So what’s a band to do if they want to continue to reach their fans? For Cannibal Corpse and omniscient VH1 talking head and sometime Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, the answer is to branch out into comics.
Cannibal Corpse are teaming with noted artist Vince Locke to create a graphic novel titled Evisceration Plague. This will be amazing. We’ve known about Locke since the extremely gory comic Deadworld from years ago, and he also illustrated A History Of Violence, which was a graphic novel before it was a movie. He’s also illustrated all of the band’s album covers, so it will be a natural fit to see the themes of their lyrics expanded from an album cover to a whole novel. There will be a story for each song on the album in chronological order. There are only 500 copies available in the UK, and there hasn’t been any word on the US availability yet.
Ian will be writing Lobo: Highway to Hell, a two-issue comic series coming in November from DC Comics. The series will launch in November. Lobo, most popular in the ’90s, is an alien biker. Anthrax, most popular in the ’80s, are putting a new album out this year if their singer gets better. It should be interesting to see the story that Ian comes up with, as he’s no stranger to comics. “I Am the Law” was written about Judge Dredd long before Sylvester Stallone ruined him. Sam Kieth will handle artwork for the series.
