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WATCH C2E2: Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine does comics

By Jordan Zakarin

Peace sells... but who's buying? Metal fans and comic fans, when it comes to Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine's new Heavy Metal comic collab with Death By Design.

With the release of Megadeth's 35-year anniversary album Warheads on Foreheads, Mustaine wanted to do something celebrating the band and their extensive career, so he was thrilled to join forces with the most talented artists and writers he could find to conceive a story based on the meaning behind each song that made it on to the album. Of course, that meant Heavy Metal CEO Jeff Kralitz and creator Tim Seeley ended up with a Dropbox full of meticulously detailed breakdowns from Mustaine, a huge comic fan himself.

"I grew up on Megadeth," Seeley told SYFY WIRE's Jordan Zakarin. "Getting to see what Dave thought about [each] song and then translating that into a story is a little interpretation, but is going for the feel and the vibe and the message. It was a cool challenge."

Mustaine himself grew up on comics. Not only are a number of his songs about The Punisher, but he's also into Iron Man and Captain America. As a kid he'd go to the liquor store on the corner of his house and buy packs of Iron Man cards with stale bubblegum. Forget the gum — he'd collect as many as he could and make posters out of them.

This isn’t his first go at comics, either. Some years ago he tried collaborating with Chaos Comics, but that never really worked out. Meanwhile, Death by Design is supposed to be a mind-blowing journey through the band’s career.

"Some of the stories in there don't exactly match up literally with the lyrics, but I think that's great artistic license — when you work with great talent, you collaborate," said Mustaine.

By the way, "Peace Sells" is actually not on this album. Sorry about that, but Mustaine says it's been on way too many others already. Whether it's in the graphic novel remains to be seen...

This article was contributed to by Elizabeth Rayne.