Interview: Claudio Sanchez talks ‘Kill Audio’ – Part 1

At San Diego Comic-Con, we got the chance to sit down and speak with Claudio Sanchez, lead singer of the band Coheed and Cambria and creator of the Amory Wars, about his involvement in the upcoming project Kill Audio from Boom! Studios. Those who have seen the pages available on Kill Audio’s Myspace are probably wondering what’s going on inside Claudio’s head to come up with the out of this world character like Kill Audio and that’s what we sought to find out when we got the chance to talk with him.

The Flickcast: You’re going to be working on a comic book with Boom! Studios. Would you like to tell us about that?

Claudio Sanchez: The comic is called Kill Audio. It’s a bit of a fantasy comedy. This main character, Kill Audio, kinda wakes up, well not so much wakes up but finds himself kind of confused and unsure of what his purpose is in this world called Sight and Sound. His main enemy actually gives him some kind of insight.

He finds out his purpose in this world of Sight and Sound is he is a part of this team called the Void, which is like void of creativity, and music has spiraled out of control in his absence. In trying to put all the pieces back together and get everything kind of in order, he figures that it’s not so much that creativity has naturally spiraled and evolved, it’s actually somebody motivating it so that becomes the mystery.

FC: I got to take a look at some of the first few pages on the MySpace page promoting it. How has that been so far? What kind of feedback have you gotten just off of those previews?

CS: So far, so good. I mean I definitely think it’s a pretty book to look at. Sheldon does a fantastic job with the illustrations. It’s a lot of fun. It’s certainly different for me in comparison to the Amory Wars which is a bit more of a traditional science fiction. This one just gets to be a little bit more free, a little bit more artistic.

It’s a fun book. A little whacky at times certainly, some of the things the characters kind of go through is a little off the wall but for the most part I think the art compliments it.

FC: What was the inspiration behind knives that were throwing knives? Because that obviously, the first page, you see something like that and it’s just the weirdest cool concept you could only get away with in a comic book. How did that come about?

CS: Originally when we created the concept of Kill Audio, it was going to be a vinyl toy. My fiancé and I, who is actually the co-author, are very much fans of that designer vinyl. When we created this character we wanted to make sure that he was going to be put through these death scenarios, the first one being this knives scenario.

And when we created this vinyl, we saw there is probably a story within this and a lot of the characters are very much based on my friends I grew up with and it just made sense. But we were like, “How do we incorporate the knives?” Here’s this death scenario. He have got to figure out to kind of make this equate and it just worked out. This is funny.

FC: How long do you see this going on? Is this a miniseries or do you see this with the possibility of an ongoing length of time?

CS: I’ve had so much fun working on it between working with Chonee and Sheldon that I’d love to see it continue. Certainly we can close the book with this series but Chonee and I have been discussing the possibilities of an origin story because we have left that kind of open and the continuation because that too, the end of this story kind of hints to one. I think in October we will probably start fleshing that out. I think we will continue it, we’ll see.

FC: Do you see any other books in your future or if you could choose to do another book would you choose to do the next part of this series?

CS: Right now we’re working on a few things. We are doing a couple of things with the Amory Wars. I like to work on a lot of stuff at once because it allows me to kind of break from something and hope that maybe that something will inspire the other. I like to kind of keep my plate full. Got a couple things happening with the Amory Wars. We’ll just put Kill Audio on the plate, the second one. We have another toy that we have in mind that’s been prototyped. We’re just moving.

FC: Are there any other current books that you’re reading just as a fan right now in comics?

CS: I read a lot of trades. The one that I try to keep up with the most, just because it’s a bit difficult on the road keeping single issues intact, is the Walking Dead. I do like zombies very much but what I really like is the interaction, that Night of the Living Dead almost kind of reality TV, putting people in to a scenario and seeing how they grow. The evolution of man and the end of the world. Just before I left I finished issue #63 and they got the hunters involved now. I like that. I like the human aspect element of the Walking Dead.

I just recently read Grant Morrison’s Batman “R.I.P.” and what I liked about that was they put out the Black Case Book, which is like the old 50’s era, and that was a lot of fun to read and actually very inspiring certainly for the cover issues of the Kill Audio series. Certainly trying to keep them a little bit more almost psychodelic and not necessarily so literal to the stuff that’s inside the interior of the book but kind of something that’s a nice piece of art.

FC: Back to Kill Audio, if you were unable to continue the book but still had ideas for the character, is there a writer right now who you think could carry on Kill Audio?

CS: I’m a big fan of the Goon. That’s another book I like to try and follow the single issues and I would love to see Eric Powell do a) writing and his art is amazing. I was actually at his booth yesterday looking at some pieces. Actually one of my favorite characters of that story is the Buzzard.

And this fellow before me, if there was one piece that I would have bought, he bought it. I was like, “This is my timing. Always.” But even if it’s not so much continuing the story arc but just doing a cover, I’d be super into that.

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That’s all for today. Check back tomorrow for the second part of Claudio’s interview where he talks more Kill Audio, video games, his Comic-Con experiences and shares an awkward Comic-Con moment with The Flickcast’s own John Carle.