Songs inspired by Comic Books

#4 Ghost Rider by Suicide

Fun fact, electro-punk band Suicide adopted their name from a Ghost Rider comic called Satan Suicide. The song perfectly captures the essence of the supernatural stunt motorcyclist with its droning synth, simple guitar riff, and lyrics like “he’s a-screaming the truth” sung in a high voice. If the movie adaptation was just Ghost Rider doing crazy things for ninety straight minutes while this song played in a loop it would have been a better movie. At the very least it would have been pants-shittingly terrifying.

#3 Holy Wars… The Punishment Due by Megadeth

The opening track of Megadeth’s fantastic album Rust in Peace has been voted their number one song. Thematically the inspiration came mostly from the Northern Ireland conflict, but The Punisher served as lyrical inspiration, especially for the second half of the song which contains the lines “they killed my wife and my baby, with hopes to enslave me”. Something as rough as brutal as The Punisher himself, it would be hard to top this…

#2 I Am the Law by Anthrax

Starting from the very beginning of Dredd’s career with the opening lyrics “fifteen years, in the academy, he was like no cadet they’d ever seen” this ode to Judge Dredd from Anthrax’s breakthrough album is every bit as forceful as the law enforcement officer. Nothing more should be said about the song, readers are urged to listen to it immediately.

#1 Ironman by Black Sabbath

From one of the greatest albums of all time, Paranoid, comes this incredible early metal song with some Tony Iommi’s best riffing. It is easily one of Sabbath’s best songs. Though we’ll leave it here for you to decide whether it was “inspired” or not, we do know that it was number one on the list before even the idea of the list was conceived.