What a time to be alive, for starters! Axl Rose, the notorious Guns N’ Roses frontman, is turning his talents to the graphic novel. In a new collaboration with Sumerian Comics, a Tennessee publisher with Simon & Schuster distribution, Mr. Rose will launch Appetite for Destruction—a multi-volume series loosely based on the eponymous 1987 album.
As Gregory Adams at Revolver reported, the series will feature Rose himself(!) as “a half-human, half-robot who lives on the fringes.” Here’s what else we know about the book that probably wasn’t on your 2025 bingo card.
We can thank Sumerian Comics for this. (And they’re pros.)
Since its founding in 2020, the Nashville based publisher has been churning out dark-hearted comic adaptations—like this spin on American Psycho. As a subsidiary of Sumerian Publishing Group, they’ve also made a habit of giving rock bands the graphic treatment.
The gang specializes in your older brother’s favorite bands. See this illustrated riff on Interpol’s Antics, this adaptation of The Used’s “All That I’ve Got” video, or this graphic celebration of The Offspring.
Mr. Rose is a (co-)writer.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. For—with respect to both medium and man—Mr. Rose has effectively been writing comic book copy since 1985. For this Appetite…, he joins forces with Nathan Yocum, Sumerian’s co-founder.
You do wanna judge by the cover.
True to form, Rose’s book is gonna look plenty cool. The novel features art by seasoned pro Frank Mazzoli (DUNE: Edge of a Crysknife), and colors and lettering by Antonio Antro (Hell Is Us), and Micah Myers (American Psycho), respectively.
Paradise City is not as the brochures described.
On the other hand, where else could a Guns N’ Roses graphic novel be set? Though fans may have inferred that the grass is green and the girls are pretty in Axl’s imagination, press copy describes this Paradise City as a place “where humans and robots are meant to co-exist.”
This plot stays thick!
Axl plays a cyborg vigilante.
In this Appetite…, the fringe-living Axl is best described as a cyborg-vigilante. Robot Rose then meets a lounge singer whose disappearance draws him into a conspiracy.
Though we’re invited to use our illusions, it’s all very GnR—spiritually, if not literally. Yocum has called the project “a raw, neon-noir fever dream, part rock anthem, part cyberpunk prophecy.” The publisher adds that in this world, “rebellion isn’t just attitude, it’s survival.”
Sounds like we maybe do need that Civil War, after all.
