When Phil Collen was growing up in London in the 1960s, comic books weren’t as popular as they were in the U.S. But the Def Leppard guitarist was a fan anyway. “Some of the news agents would sell these American comics, and I used to just load up on them,” the 66-year-old tells Rolling Stone via phone from his California home. “I’ve actually got The Silver Surfer No. 1. I’ve still got The Incredible Hulk No. 3 and early Batman stuff, all from the Sixties.”
Although he’s admittedly not an ardent comics fan now and hasn’t followed any recent titles, Collen latched onto the art form recently when Vault Comics asked him if he’d like to make a title of his own. Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz had created a graphic novel for them, which Collen enjoyed, but he had other ideas of how it could be done. The guitarist explained that he been writing his own “really dark short stories” lately. “Before you knew it, I’m talking to the writer [Eliot Rahal], and I’d come up with a plot and a plan, and we just kind of expanded on that,” he says.
Now Vault is releasing Hysteria: The Graphic Novel, a book that shares its title with Def Leppard’s magnum opus but little else. Instead, it tells the story of indie rocker, Foz, who fronts a band called Darkside. When she inherits her late father’s estate, she rediscovers a guitar he owned when she was little. Eventually, the instrument begins speaking to her with promises of fame and fortune and she learns the instrument’s true history, part of which is revealed in the graphic novel’s first pages above, premiering here, and hysteria ensues.
“Writing this just seemed like a very natural, normal thing to do,” Collen says. “Even the process was really … I won’t say easy, but it’s fun.”
Now Collen is writing music for a real-life Darkside project to record and says he’s just starting to understand the full power of graphic storytelling.
Read the full interview and preview the Graphic Novel at RollingStone.com
