"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.
Above; Moebius' hideous princess
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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