The following is an interview with Vince Brusio, writer of the new comic book Autopsy: Feast for a Funeral #1, which was made in collaboration with (and fully licensed by) famed death metal band Autopsy. The band, which was formed in 1987 by Chris Reifert and Eric Cutler and has long been considered a pioneering band in the death metal and Doom/Death genres, has previously ventured into other mediums (with contributions to the 2005 music documentary Metal: A Headbanger's Journey and Hellbent for Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook); however, Feast for a Funeral marks their first foray into comics. Now, Brusio and Autopsy are joining forces and taking the world by storm, as cast members in this year’s premier episode of Showtime’s Shameless can even be spotted wearing Feast for a Funeral t-shirts.
In this interview, Fanboy Comics Managing Editor Barbra Dillon chats with Brusio about the inspiration for the comic book, the creative process of working with Autopsy and artist Mats Engesten, his other upcoming projects, and more!
This interview was conducted on May 13, 2014.
Barbra J. Dillon, Fanboy Comics Managing Editor: Congratulations on the recent release of Autopsy: Feast for a Funeral #1! For our readers who may be unfamiliar with the title, how would you describe its story?
VB: Well, there’s this bottom-feeder uncle that shows up at his brother’s house, because he came across some weird things he “picked up” on the road, and he doesn’t know what to think because strange things are happening, and he claims he can now see the dead. It’s Halloween, so when the brothers leave to go bar-hopping, the kid living at home takes the stuff to his girlfriend’s house and calls up his friend to say he has some party favors. When the kids play around with the uncle’s junk (a radio, a Ouija board, and an ancient book of spells), they set free paranormal spirits that haunt a house in a nearby cornfield. The spirits were surgeons when they were alive. They were also cannibals. So, out of this cornfield come these ghosts that abduct some of the kids and drag them back into the haunted house. And then, these bikers come along, and they’re pissed off that someone’s partying in their private spot. Yeah. The perfect storm for mass carnage. Things get bloody real quickly. Insert evil laugh.
BD: The comic is officially licensed by the death metal band Autopsy. Did you know initially that you wanted to work with the band, and how did you work towards the creative partnership on the series?
VB: I never had ambitions to work with Autopsy, even though I have several of their albums in my music collection (I can’t believe I’m still saying “albums.”), but I have always gravitated towards comics that were done for rock bands (the old Revisionary Press stuff, the '70s Marvel KISS comic, Chaos! Comics Cryptic Writings of Megadeth, etc.). What happened was a publicist I knew over at Fresno Media got to talking with me one day, and I said I’d jump at the chance to do something similar to those old rock n’ roll comics. I had just finished interviewing Anthrax for an article, and that’s how we got to talking about comics (the whole Judge Dredd tie-in). He asked me if I could do a book if he lined up Autopsy for me. (The band had just reformed and were releasing All Tomorrow’s Funerals.) I laughed and said, yeah, as if he could pull off such a thing. The next thing I knew, I was talking to lead singer/drummer Chris Reifert from the band, and Chris said that a comic based on Autopsy’s music sounded like a good idea to him. So, I said my favorite album cover from the band was Severed Survival, and how I thought the cover itself could be turned into a story. That was it. I sat down that weekend, looked at that cover, and let my imagination go crazy. My wife kept her distance.
