Dark Horse Comics has just announced a three-part comic book series, written by Metalocalypse’s Jon Schnepp and illustrated by Twilight Zone’s Guiu Vilanova. The comic, Slayer: Repentless, will make dark vigilantes out of the band Slayer, whose music video series Repentless will serve as aesthetic inspiration for the series.
“It’s been my honor to chronicle the bloody road trip that is the Slayer comic series from Dark Horse/Nuclear Blast,” says Schnepp. “Using the band’s music and lyrics from their three decades of albums, while crossing over and through the Repentless music videos by BJ McDonnell, I have woven a tale of betrayal, hate, perspective, loyalty, family, and murder that will need to be experienced through the comic books’ pages.”
Metal and comics have overlapped often, and Slayer is not the first band to collaborate with Marvel, DC or Dark Horse artists. Alice Cooper famously developed album art with Neil Gaiman in the 90s, and Anthrax’s Scott Ian even wrote a Lobo series for DC. Dark Horse, specifically, has a long history of working with metal and punk musicians. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine wrote a dark comic, Orchid, for Dark Horse, and Stone Sour’s Corey Taylor wrote Dark Horse’s House of Gold & Bones. Additionally, Glenn Danzig wrote Satanika, an independent satantic erotica comic, which debuted to low sales.
It’s not clear whether the story behind Slayer’s comic will be effective, but the variant cover from Eric Powell is stunning.
The first issue of Slayer: Repentless will be available on January 25, 2017.
