SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman COREY TAYLOR is one of the growing number of musicians who are coming forward as avid comic book fans. He certainly knows his superheroes and supervillains – and the characters that he adores aren’t the characters that outsiders will readily recognise, which Attention Deficit Delirium discovered when they sat him down to discuss some of his favourite comic book characters. See below for some extracts from that interview:

Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan
“He is like cyberpunk meets Hunter S. Thompson. That’s what I really love about him. But he is also so frenetic and out of his mind and so righteous that how could you not love that character? And just the fact that he is gross; they didn’t draw him as this lean, cut, musclebound asshole.”

Jesse Custer from Preacher
“I could almost do a whole movie or book about all of the characters in the Preacher books. They’re so good. If I ever needed to find a good guy to help me in life, Jesse would be the guy that I really would try to find. He would be the archetype. He doesn’t take any shit, has got a very good sense of right and wrong and is not afraid to stand up and fight for his friends. That’s the guy I would want on my side when the shit hit the fan, almost like a Breaker Morant type.”

The Joker from Batman
“I’m a huge Batman fan, don’t get me wrong, but I think — and this is just something I’ve been thinking about recently — the reason I love Batman so much is because he is balanced by the Joker at the end of the day. Because as mad as Batman is, as insane as Batman is, he is still so ensconced in his morals and the lines that he won’t cross. He’ll go so close, but then he won’t cross them. With the Joker there are no lines. There are absolutely no lines, there are no boundaries, there are no rules. He’s really the quintessential anarchist, and to me, from his look to his laugh to his little non sequiturs that just come floating out of his mouth, he is just the ultimate bad guy. ”

Apollo and Midnighter from The Authority
“I love the fact that it’s the wink-wink nudge-nudge version of Superman and Batman at the end of the day. They’re a gay couple who are also two of the most dangerous beings on the planet. They’re completely devoted to each other. Apollo is so obviously Superman it’s painful, and the Midnighter is so obviously Batman it’s not even right, but when they’re together they’re the sweetest people you’ve ever seen. Then they turn around to fight supervillains, and I mean brutally fight. It’s pretty wicked when you watch the Midnighter fly into some kind of interdimensional door, and he is basically flying an S-14 jet into a villain’s face. Now that’s just destructive as hell.”

Spider-Man
“He’s the guy that’s been with me since I was a kid. I know he’s been through a lot of changes lately, but at the end of the day I always go back to the Spider-Man that I grew up with. He doesn’t look anything like the new movie that’s coming out. It’s like, what if Spider-Man were part of the Twilight people? I’m like, really? Is that necessary? So I find myself going back to the ’70s and ’80s archetype of Spider-Man and Peter Parker, the guy who I grew up with, the guy who always had his back against the wall and always was ready to do the right thing, but at the end of the day he almost always got screwed. But he always did his best to get it done, and I’m still glad that I had that to grow up with. I grew up without a dad, so I was desperately looking for a sense of good and bad. I found it in my comics, and I found it in Spider-Man.”

Click here to read the full interview – it’s a great read!

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