He also tells Metal Hammer that he first pitched to write a Batman story involving zombies!

We sat down with Scott Ian to speak to him about his forthcoming comic book ‘Lobo: Highway To Hell’ (for the full interview with Scott, check out the Metal Hammer Magazine show on Rock Radio from 8-11pm on Sunday, November 8th).

“My manager told me about DC being interested in working with me and I was asked if I would like to have a meeting with them and I had no idea why I was being called in,” says Ian. “They asked “do you know why you’re here?” and I instantly thought I was in trouble but they asked if I would like to write a book for them. I had to say to them “you are aware that I’ve never written a comic book before, let alone a story or a screenplay?!” I write lyrics and blog about food and music! They said that they had read that and they thought I had an interesting take on things and a point of view and so they just wanted to see what I could do.”

“It was a life-long dream so I spent a month or two months thinking about things, went back to New York and obviously, I wanted to do a Batman story because it’s DC and why not go for the glory?” admits Scott. “I pitched some ideas and I learned pretty quickly that with Batman there’s a lot of do’s and don’ts and you have to stay within the DC rules and regulations and anything I’d even thought of, they were like “no, you can’t do that”, “zombies?!? No, you can’t do that!”

“I asked what characters would I not have those DC rules and regulations with and they said Lobo and then it all clicked! It’s weird because I always liked Lobo and Simon Bizzly did the artwork for Lobo and he also did Judge Dredd and that’s what initially attracted me to the character years ago.”

“They were delighted with that and they’d been thinking about a Lobo book. They wanted us to do the most over-the-top, crazy Lobo story of all time and I was like “gee, thanks! no pressure!”

“I think I got across the point that Lobo was a mass murderer withouth having to beat you over the head with that. It was important that people knew, Lobo can kill you at any time for no reason. You should never get comfortable about thinking Lobo is a good guy, he’s not a (typical) good guy.”

Scott Ian’s ‘Lobo: Highway To Hell’ was released today. Get full details from the DC website!