Photo: iTunes Festival, London 2014
Ryan Adams is far more than simply a music obssessive - he also has a weakness for collecting classic comic books. As part of our Ryan Adams takeover, here he indulges in one of his passions.
"I’ve only gotten two since I’ve been here," he tells us from the lobby of his London hotel, speaking of his comic shopping in the capital while he's in town. "I got Son Of Satan No.1 which is amazing. All of the golden age stuff over here, there isn’t much to get."
"I bought Mike [Viola, recording partner] a bunch of shit the other day from Orbital because he likes a lot of horror comics, like Tomb Of Dracula. I know a lot about the English ones, or at least the ones you can find here that you can’t find in the States, like Devilina and Monster Squad. He’s not really into 2000AD but I fucking love that."
"One interesting thing is that here in England, a newspaper-type comic came out called Fury that sort of collected what in America would become World War II-themed comic books. Sgt. Fury, Sgt Rock or Army At War – they were really dark. People don’t know how dark they are – but they’re kind of beautiful too. These are comics that I just imagined that a lot of GI’s and stuff were reading if they ever had a smoke break on the frontline. They would ship Captain America comics and stuff like that over to the GIs and then that continued to Vietman with these troops reading comic books in trenches. There’s something really heavy about that. It allowed for a lot more adult, serious reading far, far before things got heavy again in comics – it’s pretty interesting."
"I actually have a pretty completist comic collection, so a lot of the stuff I wanted I have and have read. I’m drawing them now. I buy these books that already have the squares and stuff in them, when we’re on the train or plane for a couple of hours and there’s nothing else we can really do I’ll just draw my own."
Any chance he might ever publish some of them?
"I don’t know. If I can finish one that I like then maybe. I was thinking of doing one and putting a flexi-disc in the back. I think that would be really cool. But the [comics] are really bad! There’s more where that came from."
See more of our Ryan Adams takeover below
Ryan Adams speaks openly about battling his demons to overcome writer's block
Adams opens up about his love of heavy metal music
Below: 8 stunning photos of Ryan Adams live at iTunes Festival
