HEAVY METAL Magazine #2 (May 1977)

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Front cover by Moebius

A somewhat muted air-brush painting of a bloody-mouthed monster. Not as elegant or interesting as the cover of the prior issue, but this shows Moebius displaying his airbrush technique. Considering the beauty of his ink and watercolor Harzak strips in these issues, his mastery of two mediums IS impressive.

Inside Cover Ad for Metaxa Liquor, "Drunk by gods and warriors. And men who can handle it."

FURTHER... An introduction to the current issue. Makes a cute joke that readers wrote and complained that they assumed Heavy Metal would be a rock 'n' roll magazine. These are the same people who would assume that Rolling Stone is a geology report...

This page also includes an ad selling the first issue of HM for $2.00, including shipping, predicting it will become a collector's item.

Ad for WMAL-FM 107 in Washington DC. Promoting the superiority of its playlist over those FM stations just playing the same hits as AM radio. Those exciting non-hit artists that only WMAL were daring to play in 1977?; Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Peter Frampton, Boston...   

Ad for 'The Science Fiction Art Poster Book'. From 21st Century Books. Remember when the term '21st Century' sounded so futuristic it seemed like it was a million years away?

MEAOBbIN MECRU by Tardi

Jacque Tardi is considered one of the most important and influential artists in the history of adult comics. Ya sure wouldn't know it from looking at this. 

The art is amateurish -- like drawings from a teenage boy's school notebook. One of the anti-heroes is a monster that literally looks like a purple pile of crap. It has gun barrels for hands and wears pink tennis shoes.

The story is about a lovely young Russian couple with a test tube baby. Their spaceship is invaded by non-communist forces who brutally kill the couple. The crap monster eats the test tube baby. The final panel shows The Kremlin with some non-translated Russian dialogue over it. HUH?

And how about that dialogue? ie; "No sweat, except for asshole getting bumped off, the creep." The HM translators strike again?

The Adventures of Yriss by Druillet and Alexis

The dead critter's facial skin worn like a rubber mask -- the thing I found most interesting about the end of the first installment is completely forgotten in the second installment. 

Our hero sees the five nude women being lowered into a pit to be fed to a monster. He lowers himself down on a rope to save them. The monster is vulnerable to light, so the hero uses a swarm of lightening bugs to kill him. Back above ground, the hero and the naked women sword fight and kill all the villains (YAWN!) Then they have a five girl / one guy orgy -- all sided towards the women pleasuring the man, of course (YAWN!). 

I can only assume this must be another atrociously poor translation. The human-like monster is referred to as a dragon. The lightening bugs are referred to once as bugs, then always as "flowers" after that. The whole story is an overall disappointment.  

Sunpot by Bode

I have a real problem with Vaughn Bode.

In this story, completely irrelevant to everything else in the plot, one of the male characters just gratuitously kills two women for target practice. He refers to them as 'falsies', implying they are robots, but that's not made specifically clear. This is akin to the movie 'Dawn of the Dead' -- 90 minutes of people getting their heads blown off -- being somehow acceptable since the actors have a little green make-up on their faces, meaning they represent zombies and not human beings. I find this tiny, pathetic distinction a sickening attempt at somehow nullifying sadistic violence in 'art'. Even an attempt at justifying it would be preferable to trying to nullify it. Justification argues that the violence in a work of art serves a purpose. Nullification is an attempt to reduce violence against characters, who for all intents and purposes resemble human beings, into a sociopathic non-issue.

Bode's highly stylized graphics are cool in tiny doses, but for the length of a story, they, and his dialogue even more so, are too annoyingly cutesy-poo groovy for his own good.

Agorn by Druillet

In a product as information-filled as HM, a little imaginative use of white space makes a very innovative and elegant impression. This story starts with a page that is blank, except for a single panel that vertically takes up the right one-third of the page. The next page has two panels that size (both to the right). The third page is filled with three vertical panels. It's an effective way of simulating both a fade-in, and a zoom-in to a close-up. This section is the protagonist's dream, and the irrational contrast between the intense emotion portrayed in the panels and the blank stillness that surrounds them has an inexplicably  dream-like effect. 

Druillet pulls it off with such panache that it's a shame the exact opposite is true of the rest of the story. Visually, the rest is cluttered, overly elaborate and confusingly ornate. For me, it was impossible to tell what was going on in sections of the story.

Basically it's about Agorn, a guy who is in love with a servant girl. His family thinks it's hilarious to gang rape her. They 'give' her to a wizard who sends her to hell. The 'hero' kills his whole family. Then he sells his soul to Satan in exchange for the return of the girl. Satan tells him he is damned for eternity (ever heard of someone being damned for a little while?) The End. Apparently the moral is 'Two wrongs don't make a right'.   

1996 by Montellier

Another one pager about our (now past) future. Masses of workers get laid-off from their jobs and are instructed to head to the disintegration chamber. The wacky patois from the prior stories is dropped. The cheesy woman singer from the first instalments delivers the announcement. 

Den by Corben

The story continues (of course). This time it is revealed that the Incan princess uses her fetching ways to lure males (in this case, the green monster from last issue) into her cave so she and her pet dinosaur can devour them. We also learn that Den built some kind of contraption constructed from blueprints his uncle left behind, that brought him into this world. His quest, it turns out, is to find his uncle in this strange new world.

National Lampoon ad. National Lampoon dares to Compare! Funny ad itemizing the fun stuff in National Lampoon compared to the boring stuff in U.S. News and World Report, thus demonstrating Nat Lamps superior value for your buck. Includes a tipped-in order form, stating that the reduced rates for a three year subscription are proof that Nat Lamp's owners are incompetent at math.   

Age of Ages by Akbar Del Piombo and Norman Rubington

Who says you can't learn anything about fine art by reading HM? I had never heard of Rubington before. The contents page of this issue lists only Rubington as the creator of this item. Curious about the far-fetchedly named Akbar Del Piombo, who is also credited on the actual article, I looked him up on the internet and found it is a pseudonym for Rubington:

Per the EMPTY MIRROR website;

Concealed behind the Akbar del Piombo pen name were the mordant eye and fertile brain of Norman Rubington (1921-1991). Rubington was an acclaimed American artist — painter, sculptor, illustrator and filmmaker — who lived much of his adult life abroad, chiefly in Paris and Rome. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he later studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts. During World War II, he served for three years in the U.S. Army, stationed in China. Moving to Paris in 1946, he supported himself there on the G.I. Bill and by writing pornographic novels for the Olympia Press. It was in this latter capacity that he assumed the exotic nom-de-plume of Akbar del Piombo, subsequently choosing to publish his collage novels under that same ill-famed, fabled name.

I love these images:

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Conquering Armies by Dionnet and Gal

As in Issue One, this is a super-elaborate rendering of a story that barely seems to justify all the effort -- but this is a better story than the one in the first issue. Those elaborate drawings often fail to make the most basic elements of the story clear. The title (as far as I can understand) seems to have nothing to do with the payoff. The payoff is similar to one of those EC Comics horror stories where a witch grants a wish -- in the most horrible way imaginable, to torture an innocent person for the rest of eternity. What made those EC comics work so well was that they explicitly, and very graphically depicted the horrible fate. This story ends with something of an abstract shape incorporating a few identifiable elements, but the only way to know what's going on is to read the text. The artist can create ridiculously detailed drawings, but they are very poorly conceived in terms of clear graphic story telling.

Roger by Loquet & Souchu

Just glancing at it, I thought this might be a masterpiece of originality -- a comic made up of weird photos of Barbie and Ken dolls, and a guy in a mask playing with them. It's just incomprehensible gahbage. 

Ad for Ariel, the Book of Fantasy. Same ad as in issue one.

The Star-Death of Margaret Omali by James Tiptree Jr.

I cannot tell a lie (in this particular situation)! I did not read all of this. A lengthy (four pages of small print) and verbose prose story. In Heavy Metal, I only want stories with pitchurs! It is the story of a black woman forced to undergo a clitorisectomy. Then she becomes a scientist and engineer and somehow becomes something undiscernible from the rest of universe. 

THE STORY OF JAMES TIPTREE JR, is REALLY interesting, though! Seriously! Read this!

READ ABOUT JAMES TIPTREE Jr.

Ad for subscriptions to Heavy Metal Magazine.

Virgo by Caza

This is a beautiful, sophisticated -- but very strange -- work of art. Less a story, more a meditation on a beautiful nude woman who becomes impregnated by what looks like a globe of frog's eggs. 

First, a large floating globe follows her, but she effortlessly avoids it. She then picks a similar, much smaller globe off a tree -- Adam and Eve style. She sucks on it with vampire fangs, and either falls asleep or goes unconscious. A blanket of the eggs travel across the forest floor and temporarily engulf her. She becomes impregnated with a big egg globe.

The trees look identical to those drawn by Jim Woodring. As far as I can tell, Woodrings work would not become known until a few years later, so this may have influenced him. 

Harzak by Moebius

Our hero continues his ride on the back of the winged creature. This time he battles a King Kong-like, bright red, hugely endowed monster. The hero pokes the monster in the butt with a knife (considering the ape's huge genitals I was expecting much worse!) The monster falls off a ledge in pursuit of the hero, the hero falls on the back of his winged pet and escapes. A little disappointing compared to the brilliant installment in issue one. The visuals utilize a much sunnier pallet this time around, with lemon yellow skies over a carpet of lime green plants that resemble sea anemones.

Festival by Picaret and Baret

A very prescient rock music parody. It predicts concerts with a hundred video screens on stage behind the band, displaying images from the stage, the audience and including commercials. The element of cramming as many fans as possible into the narrowest spaces imaginable predates The Who's Cincinnati tragedy by over two and a half years. The art is satirically groovy in a Peter Max way -- perfect for the subject matter. I don't really get the significance of the massive rat attack at the end -- it seems to be a reference the The Pied Piper of Hamelin -- but it's still a fine story, perfectly executed.  

Inside back cover ad; Ginseng Cologne by English Leather. Same ad as last month. 

Back Cover by Druillet Druillet is not my favorite HM artist, but, as I said, its nice HM had the integrity to print art on its back cover, rather than the cigarette ads ubiquitous to other mags in the 70s. 

HEAVY METAL Magazine Issue 1 (April 1977)

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"While listening to a Johnny Cash album, I realized that science fiction is a cathedral." -- Moebius (paraphrased)

Front cover by Nicollett implies a story. It depicts two robots -- one beating the other to 'death'. The lighter colored robot holds a screwdriver. Apparently he repaired the other robot, only to have it beat him to death with a huge crescent wrench. The aggressor robot has boobs and high healed shaped feet, but a very unfeminine gargoylish face. The coloring is lovely and surprisingly tastefully inventive. The colors are largely varying degrees of blue/grey with white and bright orange highlights where the light falls on the robots. The 'Heavy Metal' logo is gold.

Inside front cover is a teaser ad for an upcoming (title not stated) A&M album by The Tubes -- a San Franciscan art band that would shortly turn new wave hitmakers.

1st page ad is for a 10 cent subscription to a sci-fi book club.

ORIGINS (author uncredited) An introduction to the new magazine. It explains that this is the American translation of a French science fiction magazine originally called Metal Hurlant.  The introduction wryly concedes the incomprehensibility (to Americans) of the quirky French concept of  the term 'Science Fiction'. (see the 'Johnny Cash quote' above.) The introduction is a clever, non-condescending way of implying that this magazine will test the limited perceptions Americans have of Sci-Fi -- just blame it on French nuttiness!

Page 4 ad for subscriptions for National Lampoon Magazine.

DEN by Corben. The first installment of one of HM's signature pieces -- it formed the basis of a featured section of the Heavy Metal movie. The almost fluorescent art has a beautiful, bordering on garish glow reminiscent of the art of Maxfield Parish. 

Like The Bible's origin story in The Book of Genesis, the story begins in darkness. The lead character, DEN, is becoming conscious of this universe as he forms it in his own mind, before he is even conscious of his own identity. His identity in this universe is also being formed by him, and he then becomes aware of it. That's an impressively philosophical concept to convey impressionistically in two comic book pages! Oddly, the more tangible concept behind the story -- that this is somehow the emerging, unconscious fantasy of a nerdy teenage boy -- is less clear. Had I not seen the movie, I may not have understood it. 

There is humor involved. The boy is fantasizing himself as a muscle bound, hugely endowed man. After all these decades, it is still unsettlingly unsettling to see male full frontal nudity depicted in pop culture, despite the fact that female nudity has become so commonplace. Predictably, the Heavy Metal movie (a product of mainstream Hollywood) included ridiculously voluptuous female nudity in this segment, but no male nudity.

As the eight page adventure continues, DEN encounters, but does not interact with a nude Aztec-type princess, and an ominous, chubby green monster in horned armor. 

The story has the dream like quality that things are emerging from a mind that can't logically comprehend or control its own creation. Very impressive. It's understandable why Richard Corben would emerge as one of the stars of Heavy Metal magazine.

RUT by Druillet. OK, this is gonna be ONE WEIRD MAGAZINE! This black and white, pen inked story reminds me of the outre science fiction stories in underground comix of the late 60s and early 70s. The shockingly outrageous story content reminds me of them too. In this story, a giant space monster (shall we say) mates with a spaceship. When the space monster (shall we say) finishes, he discharges ugly little clawed creatures into the spaceship, which the spaceship's astronaut tries to fight off with a bat. One of the menacing little critters disappears into the man's body, apparently through his rectum. It's hard to believe this actually got sold in (as they used to describe them) news stands and finer bookstores everywhere.

CONQUERING ARMIES by Dionnet & Gal This black and white story features insanely elaborate artwork. As a cartoonist, I don't know how someone can draw so much stuff in such elaborate detail. (In a single panel, the guy drew, like, a hundred riders on horses. They're all elaborately detailed and tiny!) How long does it take to pencil and ink one panel like this, let alone several per page for 12 pages?! I'm not sure the thin story -- based on the (admittedly haunting) concept of  a city that somehow kills anyone who tries to live there -- really deserved all the excruciating graphic effort. There were elements of the story I admittedly didn't understand, but was I sufficiently intrigued to go back and read the story a second time to try to figure them out? Nope. 

Page 28 is an ad for Ariel The Book of Fantasy. There's no copy to explain what it is, but the ad art includes an illustration from the Flash Gordon comic strip, a Molly Hatchet album cover, and the title rodent from Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell album cover.

THE ADVENTURES OF YRISS by Druillet & Alexis. At the beginning, this story's visuals remind me of images from the movie El Topo by Jodorowsky (he who would later become a contributor to HM!). A men is riding through a vast wasteland on a fantastical beast, and he has a small parasol type thingy above him. The creature looks like something from one of the Star Wars movies, but, interestingly, none of them had been released yet. Apart from this exotic content, the illustrations in this story look pretty typical of the comic book art of the era. 

The hero enters a village of men with strange, rubber mask type heads who are selling women on an auction block. (Even more disturbingly, one of them looks like a barely pubescent girl, standing with her mother.) Oh, I forgot to mention -- these females are all naked. (I guess in Heavy Metal -- as we shall see -- that almost goes without saying.) 

The hero picks the pocket of one of the locals (almost as if the locals knew that would happen), the auctioneer points him out as a stranger among the crowd (although he was clearly the only normal looking human there the whole time), the aliens take off their masks to reveal they are reptile humanoids (how did they ALL KNOW to disguise themselves before he got there?). A fight breaks out and the hero and the women are hauled a way in a wagon (Hard to believe they would go through such an elaborate ruse to capture one guy, when they already had all the women in captivity) to be boiled and eaten by the aliens. The hero effortlessly escapes. (No one notices?)   

The story is even less logical than I'm going into here. I suppose it can be attributed to a surrealist, dreamlike quality, but the mainstream art style works against that (probably intended) notion. Maybe future installments will explain it all.

Anyways, the hero goes into a castle where a pair of the ugly amphibian-like critters are mating. He kills them, boils one of their heads and peels the skin off to use as a mask. Did I mention this is a really weird magazine?  

ARZACH by Moebius

Simply one of the most graphically extraordinary things I've ever seen.

The wordless piece tells the story of a hero flying about, riding a mythical pterodactyl type creature. Through a tower window he sees an undressing princess, her face conveniently obscured by the dress she is pulling over her head. Continuing on, he spies an evil-doer attempting to break in.

The colors are a marvel. The tower is bright, burnt orange, with subtle variations of color. Throughout the story, skies are black, purple and variations of blue, sparkled with hot pink stars. While flying by, the hero lassoes the villain, then carries him through the skies, hanging from the rope. A group of emaciated men, apparently abandoned on a mesa, watch as they fly by. The men are bright lime green and yellow against the indigo clouded night sky.  

The next three panels are a tour de force. They depict the hero, his pet and their human cargo flying towards a gigantic dinosaur type skeleton. The first of these panels is a closeup of the upper front third of the dinosaur's skull from the side. The second, the front one-fourth of the entire skeleton. The third, the full skeleton. The hero and his 'bird', stay in perfect, enlarging perspective flying towards it throughout, despite the changing dimensions and viewpoints. This is extremely challenging stuff for a cartoonist to correctly visualize. The inked cross hatching makes perfect shadows on the skeleton. The cross hatching is enhanced with lovely shades of green to grey to tan. 

The hero hangs the villain from a rib of the dinosaur, and flies back to the tower to make his romantic conquest.

The story's unpretentious punchline -- the princess is revealed to be a hideous alien -- like one of Basil Wolverton's psychotically ugly 'women'.

The entire story's continuity seems as smooth and effortless as the flight of a bird. It is perfection.

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Above; Moebius' hideous princess

Above: one of Basil Wolverton's "women".

SELENIA by Marred & Macedo

The plot starts with a 2001 A Space Odyssey-ish contrivance -- aliens attract astronauts to a strange occurrence on a barren planet. Eventually, the male astronauts become robots, or transistors within the giant robot -- or something. The story includes totally gratuitous depictions of a nude woman. (Would a robot really feel compelled to see a woman nude?) No, but, of course, Heavy Metal Readers would.

This story seems to exist merely to justify the inclusion of this really cool illustration;

Again, another example of excellent art throughout, although some aspects of the character's actions look stiff and clumsy. (As a cartoonist, I know it is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to make you character's actions look natural. Purging the last vestiges of that awkwardness from your art is usually the hardest thing to accomplish. I certainly haven't succeeded at it yet.)

The dialogue is far clumsier. The popular theory among HM aficionados is that the original dialogue in these stories was not poorly written, it is just poorly translated. 

THE SWORD OF SHANNARA (excerpt) by Terry Brooks  

A prose story, apparently, the novel was an attempt to cash in on the lucrative 'Lord of the Rings' literary market. This is about an elf waiting in the enchanted forest for someone to show up -- or  something like that. 'Waiting for Godot' it ain't! It barely held my attention -- not enough pitchurs!

TRAUMWACH (A Tale of Romantic Kitsch) by Mouchel, Pauline Pierson & Voss   

My initial reaction to this story was, "Yeesh! Was this thing written by a chick?" That, as opposed to, "This story is so inciteful into genuine human emotions I would be surprised if it wasn't written by a woman." It's like a story written by Marcia Brady on acid.  

 Of course, they concede in their subtitle that this is a big pile of kitsch, but admitting to it doesn't make the story any better!  

The art style is reminiscent of that of the underground comix great Spain Rodriguez, only less funky and sanitized into a rather girlie, trendy style. 

The hero has long blond hair, and from the neck up he is purdy enough to be a girl. He's all manly from the neck down. He rides a massive, macho motor cycle and wields a more - than - suggestively - penis - shaped gun. His name is Chevalier Ulysses de Saint Alban (pheew!). The story features similarly painfully labored dialogue and captions ie; "At that same moment, on the stage of the theater of celestial passions..." The story is about two male angels, one good, one evil, doing brief battle over a helpless female angel, while the man with five initials does nothing but watch. The angels all 'die' (can angels die?) are turned to liquid and transformed into a robot that has the pose of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Some Roman columns collapse as the over named person rides of on his hog, hopefully NOT to any further adventures.

TMI! A red and black coupon card for discounts on subscriptions to HM is inserted after the sixth page of the previous story, between pages 64 and 65.

SPACE PUNKS by Mezieres

This one pleasantly fooled me. It has art that would be REALLY COOL to a 14 year old boy. (And, as everyone knows, the 14 year-old-boy lives on in the 57 year old man.) It starts off with dumb clichés. A septet of juvenile delinquents are caught, following a minor infraction of the law. They are given a choice of going to jail, or becoming space soldiers. (And I thought the premise of The Mod Squad was ridiculous!) Only one of the seven, our narrator, chooses the latter. Their parents are apparently non-existent, or had no say in the kids' decisions. The clichés continue, with a John Wayne type commander stirring patriotism, and rousing the soldiers to action.

On the seventh page of the story, everything shifts with a clever wryness. Amidst an orange cloud, soldiers in their cool riot gear survey the area after their triumphant invasion. A dead baby is subtly, but unmistakably depicted amongst the carnage. Taken in the context of its time, this is clearly a Viet Nam war analogy. (At the time, when it became obvious we weren't going to win the war -- the blame was put on our soldiers, who were written off as 'baby killers'. Blaming all the 'little guys' because a few committed atrocities -- distracting from the fact that our government shouldn't have sent them there in the first place and that the big shots wouldn't allow our soldiers to employ a winning strategy.)  For anyone who was around at the time, it's impossible not to equate the clouds with agent orange.

A barefoot native, in a grass skirt and jewelry made of seashells, comes forward wielding a knife, and our narrator blasts him away.  Our narrator is deemed a hero, wins a medal, and his future success is assured. At the end, we see him as a middle aged family man, with a son of about ten, also in space - riot - gear, who looks like a conceited bully. 

I have almost no tolerance for stories that blame wars on the soldiers. This one, though, makes a subtle point -- that (in individual instances) recruiting a certain type of person as a soldier propagates the glorification of war. 

SHOCK! HORROR! AN AMERICAN MAGAZINE PRACTICING 'ART FOR ART'S SAKE!' This headline applies to all of the following articles headlined in green! Saves me stating the phrase redundantly four more times in the following reviews/summaries.

1996

This issue includes a pair if single page installments of 1996. The first shows a news broadcast of the world in upheaval brought on by a mass induced state of psychosis. The mother of a clean-cut family viewing the broadcast changes channels, preferring to watch a woman who looks just like her, singing an innocuous love song. 

All the dialogue is written in an odd, amusing patois. It's impressive that the dialogue can be so garbled and still be understandable. 

In the second installment, the woman singing the song is on a TV screen in a bar. The bartender throws out a space alien, referring to him as a 'Dam furner.' (Damn foreigner.)

The art is fairly realistic. This isn't one (I should say two) of the best stories in this issue, but I give credit for originality, and this is a commendably quirky attempt at a humor comic. 

SUNPOT by Vaughn Bode

Vaughn Bode was probably the best loved underground cartoonist of the '70s. (R. Crumb is the greatest cartoonist of all time, of course, but in the 70's, Bode was more popular.) Bode's influence on graffiti art is practically ubiquitous to this day. He is creating a new universe here. This was apparently one of the last things he ever drew. It lacks his stellar color pencil technique, as it was colored by someone else after Bode died. He seems to be killing a lot of time (or, in a word, pages) here; a full page panel of the ship floating in space, a full page blueprint of the ship, and two pages of character introductions. What very little happens in the four pages of actual story is that aliens on a spaceship consider destroying an Apollo spaceship they are threatened by. 

The story is full of Vaughn Bode clichés. How much you like this strip will depend on how much you like these clichés, and whether for you they are still beguiling or have become tedious.

AGE OF AGERS A GOTHIC SCIENCE FICTION TRIP TO THE APOCOLYPSE by Rubington

What mainstream American publication would actually publish four pages of Dadaist collages composed from Victorian era illustrations, with absurdist poetry for text? Heavy Metal, of course! -- God love it!

MANIPULATION by Roy

This is the most haunting story in this issue of HM. In some ways it is my favorite. A boy and girl in the early stages of puberty regularly sneak out of their houses at night to meet up and enjoy their innocent romance -- often reading comic books. On TV newscasts we learn that a mass murderer of children is in the neighborhood and has killed one of the boy's friends. 

The illustrations are done in a nice combination of vaguely juvenile looking line-drawings embellished with slightly dark graywashes -- perfect for the wistful and slightly eerie quality of the story. 

Refreshingly, the boy and girl are alive and well as of the story's ending. They have NO CONTACT AT ALL with the murderer. 

Initially, I was disappointed with the last panel -- a payoff that the children are being monitored on surveillance equipment by Donald Duck and Micky Mouse. After the naturalistic, humanistic story telling, the cartoony ending originally struck me as incongruous -- like a very moving story suddenly ending in a cheap-laugh punchline.

 After having time to let it sink in, I like the ending better. Perhaps it is a symbolic statement about how childrens' naivete comforts them with a false sense of security. Still, a great story.    

Back Cover by Druillet

It's refreshing to see a magazine from the 70s without an ad on the back -- usually they were cigarette ads. Back cover ads were usually a major source of revenue for magazine publishers, so I give them credit for designing the mag for art's sake, rather than the almighty buck. Having said that, the art on the back isn't very good. I know -- bitch, bitch, bitch.

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Heavy Metal (1981 feature film on Blu-Ray)

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Note: This is a review of the Heavy Metal Blu-Ray -- NOT specifically the actual movie. If this seems like a slim distinction, I think I can justify it. The Blu-ray extras are actually longer than the feature film. For practical purposes, a review of the movie AND the disc extras is WAY TOO LONG and unwieldy for this format. The movie review should turn up here early next year.

          This is one of those rare examples where the disc extras are arguably better then the movie itself. (And I DO like the movie.)  

Documentary: 'Imagining Heavy Metal'.

          This is a very thorough 40 minute documentary. The filmmakers have a very accurate sense of the film's overall quality and shortcomings. Layout artist Terry Windell puts it best when he says, "There are flaws, but it's done with a purity of heart." He states this entirely without facetiousness or irony. In the realms of Heavy Metal, 'purity of heart' does not preclude graphic sex, preposterously voluptuous female nudity and twisted violence. The filmmakers state that this is the stuff that adolescent male fantasies are made of. (I've never liked, let alone fantasized about violence, but hey, that's just me.) 

          It's pretty impressive that the interviewees are so detailed and accurate in their comments that no narration is needed.

         A brief comment on the magazine's origins are duly noted. A few commenters relate their personal histories as fans of the magazine, and their admiration for the twisted fantasy worlds and universes it creates. They're honest enough to admit that prolific, exaggerated female nudity was of major appeal as well. (All the creators here are male, and apparently heterosexual Caucasians.)  It IS a film from a very heterosexual male perspective -- a completely accurate reflection of the source material.         

Original Feature-Length Rough Cut with optional commentary by Carl Macek

          "Rough cut" is an extreme understatement. What we get is a more than feature length leica reel. A leica reel is a film of the movie's various scenes photographed from pencil drawings on paper. It allowed animators to critique proposed scenes, and make edits and corrections before committing to the expensive and labor intensive process of animating with ink and paint on transparent cels. At times it is merely a series individual drawings -- the animators simply didn't need anything more elaborate to do their work on those sections.

          This is probably a feature that only a cartoonist could love. If you've ever subjected yourself to resolving the endless series of visual problems that cartooning represents, you will find it very interesting.

Deleted Scenes with optional commentary

          "Deleted scenes" is a bit of a misnomer. Completed scenes are rarely edited out of animated films. The animation process is so expensive, story editing is done in the planning process -- That's why leica reels were invented. Indeed, leica reels, story board and conceptual drawings are what we get here, depicting concepts of the proposed scenes. 

          Curiously, they had the potential to be the movie's best and most important scenes.

          One concept, was that the girl in the rap-arounds would ride a carousel on seats that were emblematic of the scene that is about to be presented (ie: an airplane, a taxi, a spaceship). The over all concept is that the girl literally feels the pain of each scene's protagonist, thus identifying profoundly with the pain the orb has caused throughout history, and steeling her to take action against it.

          Even more impressive is a scene that depicts nothing less than the entire evolution of life on earth from single cells, to plants and animals, to human kind and its history up to Adolph Hitler. The evil orb floats through it all, generating all the evil in history. This scene would have appeared part way through the film, just prior to the scene with the airplane pilot. 

         Creatively, the filmmakers appear to have been about a half step short of the obvious -- this scene should have been the film's opening sequence. An extra 20 seconds of animation could have lead from Hitler to rocket propulsion, to the atom bomb, to space travel. That could have lead to the opening credits, with the car dropped from the space shuttle.

          Of course, including these scenes wouldn't have fooled anyone into believing this was anything other than an anthology of disparate stories, but they would have added a much needed emotional resonance and epic scale to the film. 

          Reviewing the evolution reel decades later, Reitman regretted not including it. His only misgiving is that it could have been so spectacular that the rest of the film might have been a let down by comparison.    

          He admits the only reason it wasn't animated was because they had used up their budget and they already had enough footage to make the film the contractually-agreed-to minimum length.

          The Blu-Ray edition of the Heavy Metal Movie is more than reasonably priced, and is a very impressive, informative release for fans of the film.