Heavy Metal #5 (Legacy #325)

Heavy Metal #325 came out in the beginning of May 2026, and I got mine before the end of May.  What could be the first issue of the second year of Heavy Metal Magazine's rebirth, it will be the last before the magazine goes to bimonthly publication for six issues a year.  New bimonthly subscriptions were offered, and there has been confusion for some who started new quarterly subscriptions more recently, among others.  More on that subject for another time.

But already, notable changes were applied for this one.  For one, the various cover artists are not listed on the contents pages.  Now, the artist of the particular cover is noted across the top.

My issue is the store version Cover A by Pascal Blanché:

 

Pretty nice, I give it a 7.  I thought the variously horny bat-winged eyeballs were cute.  Some odd pixely stuff in spots, like it was on purpose, like they used to do with zip-a-tone.  Apparently only three variants this time, and one is a "webstore exclusive nsfw".  I'm not sure if this is an improvement:

Images from the HM store:

 

The back cover is a collection of images from the contents, a trick I don't recall being done before:

  

Mr Forte's brief editorial is mostly a summary of the magazine's contents, with just a small paragraph of opinion celebrating the "hand-picked chaos" of Heavy Metal Magazine in times of digital algorithms.

Likewise the Contents pages are different, without the list of covers and artists, fewer names on the masthead, pared down to big shots it seems, and fewer items listed in the contents, with 22 entries for the 232 pages.

No more Artist's Interpretation pieces, for now anyway.  There's no Dossier this issue either, but there is an article "Scrap Metal" (With a logo crafted from Scrap in an 80s-looking rounded font, and Metal as the Heavy Metal logo.  About which I have mixed feelings.), by Cody Goodfellow, subtitled "Neon and Chrome:  How Neotropolis/Wasteland Weekend Make It Epic".  Wasteland Weekend appears to be a fun time where people enjoy dressing up like it's a post apocalyptic wasteland, like a Ren Faire for Mad Max enthusiasts.  Similarly, Neotropolis is shown as a place where folks do the same with a blade-runner-in-a-galaxy-far-away vibe, though they say characters must be original.  Looks like a lot of fun if you enjoy that kind of thing.

"Thellus" by Simona Mogavino, Carlos Gomez, Lorenzo Pieri, JAME - 6 - Subtitled "The Cycle of Eva Samas", and with translations by Ivanka T Hahnenberger and Elowyn Castle, and edits by R.G. Llarena.  Eva seems to be a hunter, captured, and a couple flashbacks attempt to fill in some space.  I had a hard time with this one, lots of info fragments and hints that didn't seem to come together for me.  I don't know what I should be looking forward to next.

"The Blue Angel" by Gauckler, Jacob Bascle, Julia Skorcz, R.G. Llarena - 6 - Front line soldiers are given a new pill, called Blue Angel.  We're not told just what it's for, but it seems to work particularly well on one soldier.

"Gladiatrix by  John Stanisci, Dan Gordon, David Baron, Tom Napolitano,  Chris Thompson - 6 - First with "The Trials of Ta-Neen" then "Part Five Leap" and including "Special Thanks to Vlas and Charley Parlapanides".  My interest in this one is waning.  The pointless filling of pages with blood doesn't advance the story.  I'd hoped after the encounter with the Sistren in #324 there might be some progress, some more showing why, but here it's just more tortured wandering.  This feature is so popular and energetic, but it's losing my attraction plodding violently along.

"Short Term Memory" by Shintaro Kago - 7 - By the creator of "Deconstructing Manga" in #323, this is another wild and crazy exposition, on short term memory.  I thought the depiction as cascading screenshots behind a guy's eyes was clever, and it made for a fun journey following along as it developed.  Highly gross ending that might go harder than I needed it to, but I suppose it had to end somewhere.

"Millstone" by Michael W Conrad, Ilias Kyriazis, Nikki Spanou, Simon Bowland, Chris Thompson - 8.5 - Jet Black and Linus seek shelter in a tree, haunted by a hanging ghost with some serious hanging hardware.  Tormented by his own memories, Jet Black departs, and they climb to a foreshadowed doom.  I'm enjoying this more.  Terrific graphics and a story that's moving forward better for me, as it asks more questions.  Really hoping it keeps going.

"Noir Horizon" by Phillipe Pelaez, Benjamin Blasco-Martinez, Jacob Bascle, Julia Skorcz, R.G. Llarena - 6 - A handful of dangerous criminals are plucked from prison for a suicide mission on a treacherous planet.  Some big shot is assassinated on the streets.  Energetic busy art doesn't cover over the disjointed storytelling for me.  It has all the appearance of a finely crafted euro graphic novel, but the plotting and characterizations seem formulaic to me, like just another preposterous action movie screenplay.  Maybe the next of the two installments will add the depth and nuance I'm missing.

"Grinding Metal" Don Brown interview by Vince Pavey - 5 - What seems to be the first of some articles about Heavy Metal Magazine and skateboarding culture.  Don Brown is an old skateboarder (almost as old as me!) from UK and he recalls how Heavy Metal and skateboarding appeared at the same time, and how "The imagery appearing in Heavy Metal - a surreal, otherworldly, and elastic reality - was circulating through the same underground channels that skaters were already plugged into."  I'll take his word for it.  It sounds like he makes a pretty good case, but it's so far from my experience, that I don't get any of the crossover references he makes.  Skating wasn't a thing back in my day, and there weren't much of any skating references in HM, but for some board merch from the much later Eastman era.

"Cold Dead War - The Aftermath" by Craig Wilson, Frank Forte, Adam Wollet - 4 - The American leads the German to the Loc-Nar's "prison", then the German slays the American, and releases the Loc-Nar inside her.  Then she expires, the American is somehow living again, and he attempts to slay the Loc-Nar, but instead is subdued and subsumed.  "The End For Now" implies more is to come, but I hope not.  Maybe bring back something cool and less derivative, like Dave Anderson's Something Seems Off, one of the bright spots in the mag at the end of the Medney era.

"The Callistan Menace" by Fernando Fernández, JAME, R.G. LLarena - 7.5 - It says "Based on a story by Isaac Asimov".  A kid stows away on a dangerous space mission.  Conveniently saving the day.  This is a throwback to an earlier graphic novel era.  Fernando Fernández was well known for work in Vampirella in the 70s and on Zora in the 80s (which Heavy Metal published).  Here, there's fine line black and white art with evident skill, which I do enjoy.  The old trope of a stowaway kid and how the tense and worn crew take to him.  The concise storytelling of a fantastical tale.  And a happy ending.  They really don't make them like this anymore.

"Taarna - Incarnatus AD 2086" by Aaron Guzikowski, And Belanger, Ridley Scott and Ridley Scott and Scott Free Productions - 2 - While the commodification will continue until morale improves, I'm a lost cause to this effort.  I dislike this very much.  Inventing lore for a Taarna backstory is annoying, I find what we get dismal and dismaying.  The premises presented are simplistic and farcical.  The committee meetings to craft them must have been interminable.  My apologies to Aaron Guzikowski who may be a good writer, and to Andy Belanger, who must have some skill, but the commodification and mouseifying of Taarna is so distasteful to me that the efforts are contaminated in my view.

"Ink" by Charley & Vlas Parlapanides, Marco Failla, Riccarda Brusca, Tom Napolitano, Yi Yang, Chris Thompson - 6 - The inked protagonist battles his antagonists, as the violence escalates to ridiculous and mystical levels.  Then suddenly, a flashback!  Some fine efforts were exerted to create this, but but I'm not appreciating it like it was meant to be.

"SUDO-S" by Jonathan Wayshak - 8 - With a "Edited by Frank Forte" at the bottom.  Oddly noted as SUNOS on the Contents page, it sure looks more like a D than an N to me in the art.  In fact, the S in the Jonathon Wayshak signature, looks like a $ to me.  Regardless, the story is about a young couple expecting, and their efforts to avoid the mandatory nanobot integration for the child.  The scratchy Wayshak art is terrific at showing the story that the words are telling.  Way$hak has been in HM a few times, recently in #323 and #322, as well as arting for a story in #295 back some years ago.  I may enjoy this entry the most.

"Cyber Therapy" by Fernando Dagnino, Chris Thompson - 6.5 - With a backdrop of a world falling into a cyber-rebellion, a woman tormented by migraines joins her therapist for a new technique to unlock repressed memories.  By having robots play her departed dysfunctional family members.  What could go wrong, you ask?  Well, maybe not quite what you may think.  It looks pretty good and it does pretty well telling its story.  The twist is mercifully brief and clever.

"Sick Futures:  The Man Who Once Was" by Peter Milligan, Goran Sudžuka, Exequiel Fernández Roel, Camila Jorge, Ezequiel Inverni - 6 - This has a "Special Thanks to Ricardo Llarena" with the credits.  In this story set in a near future of medical technology, where people live long lives thanks to synthetic body part and organs, a man wakes with pain, which is traced to his one remaining original human vertebrae.

"The Surf Men" by Ferran Xalabarder - 7 - A luscious and sexy dream.  Ferran Xalabarder was a frequent HM contributor in the early 2010s, most recently in #267, and I often enjoyed the imaginative and ecstatic visions that were crafted.  Glad to see this here.

"Steel Beat" by Vladimiro Merino - 6 - Japanese cybernetic humanoids are lost and forgotten in the Bronx in '85.  Reactivated, they attempt survival by breakdance battle.  They disappear as quickly as they appeared, with only echoes in the night forty years later.

Ghanem Dragonslayer by Abraham Martínez, Milton Sobreiro, Felipe Sobreiro - 6 - An old fisherman is swallowed by a dragon, so he has time to reminisce as he awaits death.  

At least there is a Metal Strips segment, with The Bus by Paul Kirchner, Gag Reflex by Shannon Wheeler, and Caveman by Tayyar Özkan.  Though I found the jokes tame, even The Bus.

Metal Detector, Flops interview with Chris Thompson.  The creator of the following feature seems grateful for success and eager with advice.

"Face Value"  by Flops, Tom Williams, Chris Thompson - 7 - Pop Star sells her rights, digital and physical, and finds her value is not hers.  Cutest part is the integrated Heavy Metal Magazine ad poster right in the middle of the story.

 

Would ya look at that

I've mentioned before that I'd like to come across a Heavy Metal belt buckle, as advertised in the magazine since the 1981 movie til 1991, but I never have.  In fact even Lostboy, of the incomparable www.heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com/ that has the only image I've seen of one on the internet, has said he's never seen one.  I've looked around for years, and more recently been cruising seller sites like ebay and etsy, but nothing.  They've been remarkably non-existent on the internet, until now:

https://www.auctionohio.com/auctions/12944/lot/332614-heavy-metal-belt-buckle

 

 

Remarkable.  

It sure looks like it was the real thing.  And just a few months ago!  And sold for just a dollar???  How could I have missed it?  (Easy, I live under a rock.)  This may be the closest I ever come to a Heavy Metal belt buckle.  But I'll keep looking.

As the fates continue to mock me and my puny desires, and yet I continue to persevere, I'll hope the sun shines upon us again, on yet another beautiful day.

Heavy Metal Pulp books

Heavy Metal Pulp was a series of books HM put out around 2010.  An apparent attempt to branch out from the magazine format, there are three books of the Netherworld series.  

 

They are written by Christopher Rowley, a well-known writer then and now, with a number of published books over the decades.  (Mr Rowley even has a website, looking untouched since these came out.)

The back covers have some info about the creators and the books:

 

The cover artist Gregory Manchess had an Artist Studio piece in the March 2010 issue.  Interior artist Justin Norman had an Artist Studio in the July 2010 issue.  No mention of them illustrating these books though. 

I did see a couple ads for the books in later 2010 issues, and this one for all three of the series in March 2011:

 

I recall when these were appearing, with some hype on the Heavy Metal website of the time.  And a youtube that's still up.  My guess is that more was planned for these books, since much of the video is not part of these books.  But it's still cool that it's still up to see.

I found a copy of #3 in a used bookstore just a couple years after they came out.  At the time I wasn't too impressed, I suppose I wished there was more to it.  I only a couple years ago procured the other two in the series online, and then just finished reading them in sequence over the past few months.

I found them more enjoyable to read all together.  It's a Heavy Metal story, and I wasn't looking for thoughtful introspection, but I had fun reading them and enjoyed how they were crafted.  The sci-fi militaristic police state and its war machines were implausible and prescient.  Bullet ripping violence abounds and there's a healthy dose of unhealthy - or at least not-for-everyone - sexuality.  The characters and their stories grew (a little) and the action was ever-coming.  There's even some character redemption and maybe even love.

A couple samples:

 

 

 

Big print on small pages can make for a quick read.  The idea of incorporating bits of art in a novel is good, and much of it here is very nice, but I'd prefer a bit more emphasis on the art than what we get.  And the avoidance of nipples is odd for a Heavy Metal product.

So, after these many years, I think these Netherworld books are a fun Heavy Metal digression that actually happened, and I'm glad I finally actually read them.  And if you like this kind of thing too, then I'll recommend it.

Heavy Metal #4 (Legacy #324)

I picked up my copy of Heavy Metal #4 - Legacy #324 in early February this year.  It's especially ridiculous that I'm just getting to a review after two months.  But I'm getting to it now.  Let's see if I finish it before the next issue shows up.  This marks the fourth quarterly issue and a year of Heavy Metal's resurrection.  It's been far from flawless, but I'll admit I'm impressed, and grateful.

I got the Cover A in a comic shop.  It's by Olivia de Berardinis, who's had many covers on Heavy Metal Magazine, 11 covers counting this one, by my count (of entries in the excellent  www.heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com/ ), along with 10 entries in the 1994 Pinup Special issue, and two Galleries and one interview in the mag (in July 1998).  Quite prolific, and quite talented and able.

As one can see:

 

Pretty nice, I say it gets an 8.  A hot pink zebra striped babe with absurd spike heels, with a frisky demon coppin' a couple feels.  Olivia is still out there, making and selling her art, so I hope we get more of her covers.

Again the magazine is its enormous 232 pages, and Mr Forte again comes in immediately with his Cybertorial deeming this the Cyberpunk issue.  He doesn't resist a history lesson on the term, recent though it is.

The Contents page has a nice illustration, "Cybergirl" by Alex Chow.  The usual cast of characters on the Masthead, with an addition of Peter Kleinman getting a "Logo designed by" credit, which I think is appropriate, especially since I had a small email conversation with Mr Kleinman a few years back which I remember with fondness.

"Artist's Interpretation" by Vassilis Gogtzilas - 6 - This issue's theme is Cyberpunk (of course), and this piece by Vassilis Gogtzilas is done with bold and spare brush strokes, a style that clearly requires skill to execute so effectively, but that doesn't do it for me for a piece like this.  Also the "tough cop falls for the seemingly helpless victim" trope is overdone for me (not unlike in the "Harry Canyon" story in #322).

Dossier starts with a two page ad for the Ranx book, which is finally appearing.  Then a two page article remembering Drew Struzan who was just featured in #323.  Then a couple pages of cyberblather.  Two articles by Jason Wilde, with claims so lacking in attribution that they could be real as easily as they could be unhinged online rants from a tinfoil covered skull, and a couple by Josh Sky that actually include some names and numbers, which are more believable for me.  There are some nice illustrations by Katie Houghton Ward

"Bug" Part Four by Enki Bilal - 7 - The one guy in orbit who somehow contains everything in his brain since the digital world collapsed, has returned to the surface to find his kidnapped daughter.  It's become a crime thriller of sorts, I hope we get a bit more post-digital-apocalypse wackiness soon.

Artist's Interpretation by Edu Menna - 6 - With an illustration of a dystopian Future warrior babe, it's most notable for her butt cheeks hangin' out her hotpants.

"Burton and Syb" by José Ortiz and Antonio Segura - 6 - Subtitled "We Must Feed the Grumskis".  The zany duo bait an overconfident Hunter, into hunting the last Grumskis.  But the Grumskis prevails.  This time I was bit more amused by them than I usually am.

"At the End of the Line" by Valentin Ramón - 7.5 - R.G. Llarena edits.   A grim tale of the rise of the Transhumanist Party in a modern city.  A guy watches it happen around him approvingly, "cleaning up the city is long overdue".  His spouse is more skeptical.  Sometimes bewildering flash back/forward storytelling effectively shows the before and after effects, and it doesn't turn out well for the guy.  Though it's many panels with many word balloons, I thought it looked good and told its story well.  And it's a story that needs telling again.

Artist's Interpretation by Nenad Gucunja - 7 - A cool image, with a floating duck, and a description of a low-class maintenance tech, who actually sabotages the quantum relocation device he is tasked with maintaining.  For the Rebellion.  

"Cold Dead War - The Aftermath" by Craig Wilson, Frank Forte, Adam Wollet - 5 - The spider in its web looks more like a scorpion, but it's really a demon.  Which the guy somehow slays with a sword.  This one ends with a "To be concluded..."

"The Ferryman" by Milan Isakov - 7 - The Ferryman's encounter with a mermaid doesn't go as he may have hoped.  Cool black and white art with nice use of shadow.

"Million Dollar Idea" by Ondrej Neff, Michal Suchánek, Frank Forte - 6 - Clumsy thugs try to steal scrap technology from a space dump, and argue about it until it nearly kills them all.

"The Elevator" by Pepe Moreno - 7 - An old man in the city gets bamboozled by a newspaper ad for a job, which leads to what seems a costly method of social engineering.  Pepe Moreno has done some fine HM stories, including Rebel in the 80s, Gene Kong in the 2010s, and now this, which seems to be dated "81".

Artist's Interpretation by Pepe Valencia - 6 - A cyberwarrior seems to be calibrating her new war implant.

"Taarna - Rebirth" by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Anna Morozova, Tom Napolitano, Chris Thompson, Dave Kelly - 5 - In this one the art has a chance to shine, Taarna fights a snow-demon in a storm, and  the swirling winds and hairs energize the pages.  The story is summarized by Taarna:  "I felt the call of the Stones which you sought, though I did not understand why."  Yeah, me neither.  But the sky parts, the sun shines, maybe she even finds love.

"Big Germs" by Rudy Rucker - 7.5 - With illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli, who was prolific in HM in the 2000s, and which look different from most of what he did then.  And Cody Goodfellow provides some edits.  A prose piece describing a neat future dystopia art scene.  Where a couple artists create art called a tangle, that is observed via a uvvy, a tweaked critter one wears.  The art takes on a big germ form in reality and they get to engineer social change.  Cool.  

"Phase 4 Completed" by Željko Pahek - 7 - Tiny robots are enslaved in a mine.  They earn their escape by clever use of the weapons held against them, and a fun use of the bunch-of-kids-in-an-overcoat trick.  I like the scratchy-detailed black and white art, and I thought this was a pretty good story.  Pahek has been appearing in HM since the late 80s, I believe this is the first since 2019 in #293.

"Gladiatrix" by John Stanisci, Dan Gordon, David Baron, Tom Napolitano, Dave Kelly - 7 - First with "The Trials of Ta-Neen" then "Part Four Pit" and including "Special Thanks to Vlas and Charley Parlapanides".  The Gladiatrix is betrayed, bound and suspended.  The thorny-dicked foe is vanquished, but the way out is yet unclear.

"Sixella - The Last Roots" by Janevsky, Dave Kelly - 7 - This is Part 4.  Rescued from their escape, the protagonist survives a space battle to land at a green oasis.  Losing their robot but gaining an ally, is this The End?

"Ink" by Charley & Vlas Parlapanides, Marco Failla, Riccardo Brusca, Tom Napolitano, Yi Yang, Dave Kelly - 6 - Part 3.  Formerly dead guy returns to find his Zöe and close in on those "who didn't deserve mercy."

"Millstone" by Michael W Conrad, Ilias Kyriazis, Nikki Spanou, Simon Bowland, Chris Thompson - 8 -  Jet Black presses onward, now meaning to cross a bridge.  First opposed by the Knights of the Fourth Chapter (funny), then by the wildly imaginative river beast the Knights deified.  Dismayed by the locals' displeasure at his vanquishing the river beast, Jet must defend himself and Linus the luminous child, and yet another bloodbath ensues.  This one ends with "Millstone will return", I hope it will be merely in the next issue, and not after an extended hiatus.

"Baby Trigger" by Mark McCann, Luis Guaragna, Michael Woods, Jacob Bascle, R.G. Llarena - 6 - I kinda get the story, I think.  A big shot's wife, with license to fuck around, consequently becomes pregnant, with a child that tests as the big shot's.  But it can't be!!!.  But it's really a long-game corporate assassination!!!  There are many gaps in the storytelling, and the passage of time is unclear, so needing to infer the story from the storytelling leaves me open to missing the point, as I may have.

"Ink Blot" by Alfonso Font - 7 - A fun treatment of an artist falling through dimensions of time and space and imagination at the drawing table.

Artist's Interpretation by Gonzalo Ruggieri - 7 - I quite liked the image, the colors and bold strokes work well for me here.

"Metal Optimism:  The Future According to Syd Mead"  A posthumous retrospective of Syd Mead, an artist and designer so well known, that even I had heard of him from the rock I live under.  Told as an interview with his spouse Roger Servick, by Joshua Sky, it shares many examples of Mr Mead's work and background.  Very unfortunately, Joshua Sky's name is misspelled on the Contents page.  Maybe that Proofreader needs more help.

"June 2050" by Pepe Moreno - 7 - Finding an ancient crumbled Statue of Liberty is not a new idea, but I liked the drawing.  QR code?  Seems to provide links to go to some sites, including pepemorenostudio.com/

Interview with DAF by R.G. Llarena - A one page interview with DAF, who provides the art for the following entry.  Interesting that DAF came to know HM very recently, by working on the Megadeth project.

"Steampunk Samurai" by Mattia Bassani, DAF - 7 - A samurai movie setting with steampunk layered upon it (with gasmasked minions and a blind challenger with apparently a magnetic compass for a monocle).  Where metal is saved for swords.  The challenger endeavours to release a hostage from a lord's grasp, and succeeds, to only capture the hostage for their own ends.  Lively art, though dark, and the storytelling is obtuse in a way that I get to fill in the blanks in my own imagination.

"Valentina - Part Four" by Sergio Gerasi, Vik Deluca, Tom Williams, Chris Thompson - 7 - Includes the note "Inspired by the Work of Guido Crepax" again.  Valentina enters the virtual world holding the images that were taken from her.  Confronted by the perpetrator, "AI glitches", and images of past loves, she's then attacked by the madman who made the virtual world.  The support of her sisterhood summons Valentina the Pirate, and she slays the perp, in inadequately gruesome (in my opinion) fashion.  It ends with Valentina confronted by Valentina as by Crepax.  I didn't see these particular renditions were in Heavy Metal Magazine, but they look like the original to me:

 

 

Metal Strips - "The Bus" by Paul Kirchner, Caveman by Tayyar Özkan, "Gag Reflex" by Shannon Wheeler - 7 -  I like The Bus, we need bendy buses for the big city.  Caveman is usually ok and sometimes good.  The gag in Gag Reflex is meh, but I like the nod to the Heavy Metal movie/So Beautiful So Dangerous.

The mag ends with ads for shirts and the Druuna book and subscriptions.  Well done HM folks getting through a year and I hope to see #5/#325 soon.

 

Heavy Metal #3 (Legacy #323)

I picked up my issue of Heavy Metal Magazine #3 at a nearby Barnes and Noble.  It's a few years since I last bought a new Heavy Metal Magazine at a bookstore.  The stores get the cover A; it's by Royo, and it's also been a few years for a Royo on the cover of HM, I think the previous was in 2017 (for #284).  And I wouldn't be surprised if this image was made long ago.  Still nice to have a cover by Royo in this day and age.  I give it an 8:

 

Another Royo, another impossibly gorgeous lady, this time with a demon with a weird bat skeleton cross amulet (and that bat had mighty long legs) but I enjoyed marveling at the detail, the belt, the hair, the torn stockings, it must take forever to do these.  Luis Royo is still out there, so perhaps we'll see more in future HM.  I got it pretty soon after it was released, in late October.  As of mid-December, there are folks on the HM Discord that still haven't received their subscription issue.  I sure hope the HM guys can get it together to straighten the subscription shipping problems.

Again, the magazine is huge.  232 pages, with six covers and 33 features listed on the contents pages.  Mr Forte again launches into the Editorial before the Contents, sharing a brief history of horror literature and comics, and bringing it back to Heavy Metal and expressing a desire to make Horror special issues for spooky times an annual thing.

The Contents page has a nice and creepy illustration by Vince Locke, and something I haven't  noted yet, is that the masthead includes a Proofreader, since the first new issue.  Seems like they're doing an ok job, I've only noticed one typo up to now.  At least there are only six cover variants this time.  The 33 features listed seems daunting, at least when I'm looking to do a review.

Dossier comes in with a mix of articles on old and new horror type work, mirroring Mr Forte's Editorial.  The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass animated movie sounded cool, but I can't seem to find how to see it.

The Artist's Interpretation theme is Steampunk Horrors, and our first installment is from Mr Forte hisself:  "Dr Frankenstein spent decades creating bastardized life forms from dead tissue.  One day they broke free."  It's very unfortunate, however, that Mr Forte's image, of Dr Frankenstein being attacked by his creation, is spread across two pages, and the poor Doctor disappears into the nothingness of the crease.  Two-page spreads in the perfect-bound magazine are a ridiculous proposition.  It's not possible to view the image without destroying the binding.  I hate it.  It diminishes the art and demeans the reader's experience.  I wish they would stop.  

Why would someone think this is a good look?:

 

(To be clear, I loved the two-page spreads in Heavy Metal Magazine, from the beginning in 1977 to the monthly era through 1985, because it worked.  (except for Issue Number 1, which was perfect-bound and was devoid of two-page spreads, except for a smaller Hildebrandt image in the Sword of Shannara feature, that really didn't need to cross the crease) The magazine then was "saddle-stitched", stapled so that the magazine could be completely opened to lay flat, and two-page spreads could readily be used, even wraparound covers were done.  It was great.  I would love it if Heavy Metal Magazine went back to saddle-stitched binding, to allow proper two-page spreads.  If that means fewer pages per issue, fine, then publish more issues more frequently.)

Following, there's an ad for Heavy Metal Artwear, fancy limited t-shirts by cool artists, Defame, Strange House, Dwiky Ka, with assertively-bored-looking models wearing them.  The photo for Dwiky Ka caught my eye.  It had a flag or something for Ho99o9, which I recognized from HM, it was #295 in 2019, a Music Special, and Ho99o9 was one of the featured music groups, and Dwiky Ka seems to have done some video art for them (it looked cool, but my bronze age computer was creaking and wheezing trying to access the site).

"Bug" by Enki Bilal - 7 - A brutal kidnapping, nightmares and deceit.  And the technoligarchs crumble as their digital houses of cards collapse.  Who'da thunk things could get even worse?

"Taarna - Rebirth" by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Anna Morozova, Tom Napolitano, Chris Thompson, Dave Kelly - 4 - My inability to connect the images in the art to the words in the story persists, my annoyance with little pieces of this entry, my disdain for commodification and for calling Taarna's mount "Avis", conspire to diminish my appreciation of the work presented to us.  It's too bad, the art has a nice style to it.

Interview with Stephen Graham Jones by Cody Goodfellow.  Stephen Graham Jones is apparently another well-known and successful writer, of whom I knew nothing.  I learned a bit here.

"June 2050" by John Workman - 7 - Relationship struggles in bad horror movies.  We've all been there.  I really wonder if John Workman is really making these new June 2050 stories.  The internet couldn't tell me, but I did come across some neat older articles remarking on Mr Workman, one by RM Rhodes, a few by Todd Klein, who I also came across looking up Peter Kleinman a while back (BTW Todd Klein also had a couple pieces in Heavy Metal Magazine, Illostratos in August 1979, and June 2843 in September 1983).

"A Spice of Life" by Fernando Dagnino, Andrew Scott, Chris Thompson - 7.5 - A street prophet tells the story of how the machines had won the war, and the victorious Director Burtov demands the means to experience flavor, vowing "We'll never fully own this planet if we can't taste it".  The Director gets his wish, and much more.  I thought it had good art and great storytelling, and I'd think it was even better but for an unfortunate typo in the climactic scene ("Nori Nori!"  Her name was Nora).

Artist's Interpretation - Steampunk Horrors 2 by Dylan Bryan aka Deco Noir - 6 - The art was dark but effective, reminding me of Bernie Wrightson with the shadows and sinewy appendages.  It references Joseph Merrick, known as the Elephant Man, and the challenges of others' perceptions of appearances.

"Men of Profit" by Santullo-Jok - 6 - Stories of escape and triumph, are merely projections into the minds of people enslaved by profit.  A cool art style that reminds me of other euro comic work I've seen in HM; the story had a strong message but I wished the conclusion had been more telling.

"Ink" by Charley & Vlas Parlapanides, Marco Failla, Riccardo Brusca, Tom Napolitano, Yi Yang, Dave Kelly - 6 - Continued from #322, the newly tattooed protagonist learns he must battle his enemies again.  And his enemies are near.

"Supernatural Farce" by Dwayne Harris, Frank Forte - 6 - Creepy psychic turns out to be the villain after all.  I usually enjoy Dwayne Harris work more, but this one was too simplistic for me.

Artist's Interpretation - Steampunk Horrors 3 by Shane Oakley - 6 - A take on HG Wells' War of the Worlds, with a quote from the book.  Looks nice.

"Cave Man" by Tayyar Ozkan - 5 - Cave man lives in fear of his world, full of scary things.  But it was just a nightmare of modern man.  Whose spouse seems to have horns and hooves??

"Chicken" by Luan Tie, Frank Forte - 6 - Guy is accosted by an odd blob on the way to the market, where someone is disemboweling some bird, which then gets up and dances.  Then it gets scary.  Little story with ok art, with plenty of strangeness.

"Paid in Advance" by - 7 - Diego Agrimbau, Carina Altonaga, R.G. Llarena - 7 - Regular guy has his life upended by tragedy, to the point he's sentenced to space prison.  He takes a mining gig to reduce his sentence.  Then he decides everyone must pay for his misfortune.

Artist's Interpretation - Steampunk Horrors 4 by Priscilla Petraites and Alex Guimarães - 6 - An image of a man paralyzed in a chair, with perhaps a naked angel perched atop him.  The accompanying text reads as a diary entry, of a man it seems besotted with his own hubris.  A brief telling of the old story of the scientist blinded by their own ego, that has its own charm.  (It's unfortunate that the Contents entries for this and the next Artist's Interpretation have the creators switched around.)

"Cold Dead War - The Aftermath" by Craig Wilson, Frank Forte, Adam Wollet - 5 - The American is running from zombies again, and forced into an alliance with a former enemy.  The commodification, and the egregious use of multiple two page spreads, and the splattering of little word blobs all over, put me in a bad mood.  Sorry.

"Obj" by Wayshak - 7.5 - " ... she lives in a world she cannot understand ... " sums it up pretty nicely.  Put another way, this is an indescribable exploration of, something, reality?  consciousness?  perception?  By the same creator of "Sleepy Boy" from Legacy #322, with even more strangeness.  I liked it.

"KillBox" by Lindsey Anderson Beer, Flavio Cortés - 7 - A mostly prose piece, with some illustration, regarding a juiced-up fighter in a Killbox, which sounds like an even more brutal MMA octagon type-thing.  There's some nice description and backstory, the art complements the text, and of course he elects to take the "new" shot.

"Heresy" by Katie-Houghton-Ward, Frank Forte, Adam Wollet, R.G. Llarena - 7 - Abraham van Helsing seeks the last nosferatu on earth.  Finding three women of otherworldly beauty, he thinks he's found them.  Close but not quite.  Pretty drawings of pretty women and it's amazing that van Helsing has lived this long with how easily he's duped and overwhelmed.

"Primeval" by David Quinn, Tim Vigil, Jay Fotos, Adam Wollet, Frank Forte - 6 -  Immortal demoness in ridiculously silly evil villain outfit, rants and incants to bring on the end of the world.

"Millstone" by Michael W Conrad, Ilias Kyriazis, Nikki Spanou, Simon Bowland, Chris Thompson - 8 -  Jet Black dispenses with a clockwork sagittarii, then must face Cavitus, a deathbringer "driven by an otherworldly sentience that has taken a rotten tooth as its home".  Brilliant.  What unholy demons will Jet Black encounter next?

Artist's Interpretation - Steampunk Horrors 4 by  Filipe Cunha - 6 - A witch inveighs against the technological abominations perpetrated by modern man.  That's a mighty big witch's hat ye' got there.

Interview with Matías De Vincenzo by R.G. Llarena -  A short one page interview with Matías De Vincenzo, who does the work following, which takes inspiration from a Hans Christian Andersen story.

"The Ugly Duckling" by Matías De Vincenzo - 7.5 - A clever apocalyptic take on the old tale.  The little one must endure humans displaying their inhumanity through the centuries.

"Deconstructing Manga" by Shintaro Kago -7 - A wild and crazy exploration of the panel comic form, quickly devolving into mayhem.  Pretty fun.

"The Candidate" by Alfonso Font, Frank Forte - 6 - A torturer proves unsuited for the task.

"Beacon from Scorpius 4" by Frank Forte, Edu Menna, Liezl Buenaventura - 5 - A distress beacon brings a reluctant rescuer to a missing starship.  Looked ok but didn't hit it for me.

"Gladiatrix" by John Stanisci, Dan Gordon, David Baron, Tom Napolitano, Dave Kelly - 7 - First with "The Trials of Ta-Neen" then "Part Three Cave" and including "Special Thanks to Vlas and Charley Parlapanides". The Gladiatrix was rescued by Klak-ik, an insect creature, and together they attack The Queen.  Somehow escaping, hallucinations then leave their mark.

A fake ad for Soul-O-Matic, Heavy Metal's soul removal service, was pretty funny.

Artist's Interpretation - Steampunk Horrors 5 by DAF - 6 - A Victorian vampire party.  Illustration by DAF, text is unattributed.

"Sixella - The Last Roots" by Janevsky, Dave Kelly - 7 - This is Part 3.  I think I 'm getting closer.  The robot hooker was an ally, but to where is the escape?  Still very pink.

"Valentina - Part 3" by Sergio Gerasi, Vik Deluca, Tom Williams, Chris Thompson - 7 - Valentina agrees to be digitized, but she's uploaded and released before she knows what happened.  

Metal Strips - "The Bus" by Paul Kirchner, "Gag Reflex" by Shannon Wheeler, "Harry Canyon" by Josh Sky and Frank Forte, "Gunk" by Chris Merlo - 7 - I believe The Bus is showing us new strips, since Mr Kirchner is still going and there have been several The Bus books published since it was last a regular feature in Heavy Metal Magazine.

There's a fake ad for a Heavy Metal Apocalypse cult starter kit.  Complete with goat and scented candles.  And then there's an ad selling the art wear t-shirts and playing cards and even some vinyl albums.

Well, for all the crap the last year brought, at least it brought the return of Heavy Metal Magazine.  Thanks to all at HM Heavy Industries who made it happen, and may the coming years bring us many more. 

 

 

Heavy Metal #2 (Legacy #322)

Heavy Metal #2 (Legacy #322) exists, and I got one.  Thanks to all at HM who made this happen.  And congratulations!  It appears the magazine restart is off to a good re-start, and I think you all have accomplished very much, for which I think we should all feel grateful.  And it's my hope that publishing the paper magazine will continue to be a priority for years to come for the interglobal corporate entity Heavy Metal will surely become.

I don't unconditionally love everything about this 21st century rebirth of Heavy Metal Magazine.  Much like the anthology format, which brings a wide variety of Illustrated Fantasy work to us, which sometimes means I might not like every story, it's not likely that everyone will love everything about every Heavy Metal Magazine feature, nor every bit of news or art or swag or gimmick.  

Of course, there is a lot to like.  The magazine is back, it's huge, and it's cool.  There's variety and fun and good things.  There's some looking at the past to navigate the future.  There's some promise and optimism at this time of re-emergence.  I'm looking forward to more.

But some things aren't great.  Folks still get cranky about their orders and shipments.  Not everyone wronged by the previous regime will be satisfied.  And I'm not the only one annoyed by variant cover proliferation.  It's pretty out of hand I think, and for anyone who wants to collect every bit they can, or even most of it, it will get very difficult and expensive.  But others seem to be pretty excited to have so many choices and many still get multiple copies.  And I bet HM Industries enjoys the incoming revenue.

But, speaking of covers, since I was a backer of the Kickstarter, and so a part of what they call the Angry Mob, because of disgruntled whining about the first issue appearing in public before they shipped to said backers, I got the special Angry Mob variant cover.  Mostly since I could get it for "free", just paying for shipping.  (and by the way, once the "free" issue was available to order, I did, and it took several weeks and an email from me for it to be actually shipped.  they were still having issues with shipping, including several reports of damaged mags shipped in inadequate packing, but to their credit, they seem to have been able to respond.)

Here's the Angry Mob cover, #2J:

Apologies to Sedat Oezgen and Carlos Cabrera, but, that's an ugly Heavy Metal Magazine cover.  It's probably my least favorite cover.  Even less than the promotional hodgepodge that was on March 2012.  The only redeeming features here are the sense of humor, and the unique logo treatment; representing the iconic Heavy Metal logo as deep stone sculpture, pockmarked and fracturing.  It's quite inventive and compelling, and it would have been better if this logo took up more space.  I fear the creators were given an impossible task with an impossible deadline, and could only produce what was possible.  I also fear that the image has been cropped and chopped, and it didn't help.  It gets a 4 from me.  There's a pile of prettier covers to choose from.

Even before the Contents pages, Mr Forte provides an Editorial.  Forgoing the hype machine, Mr Forte proceeds with a reminiscence of discovering Heavy Metal Magazine (specifically May 1984), and spends most of the space on it.  I enjoyed it, it reminded me of my own discovery, and how different yet how similar it was to Mr Forte's.  I hope Mr Forte can keep developing the editorials as the magazine progresses.

The Contents pages show the ten cover credits and thirty-two features in the 232 pages of this issue.  And a nice but uncredited illustration, an Alien in repose, or space-cycle pilot, maybe?  That appears signed by "Ladrönn" dated 07-22-2012.

Dossier provides a condensed fantasy literary history, some amusing things and places, and a brief meditation on meaninglessness, that includes a couple of cool snaps from the old mag; the one with the third eye is from Rock Opera, evocative of Pyloon, and I recognize but haven't placed the image of Maria from Metropolis, yet.

"Dream Invasion" starts with a preview and description of the theme prompt for this issue's installment of an artist challenge, paraphrased as "what happens when imagination stops being private?"  Nice premise, and some cool art awaits us.

"Bug" by Enki Bilal - 7 - With "de-digitalization" the world is indeed descending into apocalyptic chaos.  And there's a man in orbit with an internet's-worth of valuable information in his brain, who is suddenly the most sought-after of persons.

"Harry Canyon" by Duke Mighten and Frank Forte - 7 - It's "The Saturnian Affair".  Another night in New York with the commodified Harry Canyon, giving us a lesson in human, or in-human, kindness.  Rippin' art, many little word balloons. 

Interview with Philip Gelatt by Joshua Sky - Philip Gelatt is a writer who worked on Love Death and Robots, the animated anthology series that can trace origins to an attempted Heavy Metal movie back in the Eastman era.  Honestly I've only watched a handful of them, a while back, and I thought they were pretty good but I never kept watching.  They're probably worth a look.  And Mr Gelatt also did a more recent movie called Spine of Night that looks interesting, so maybe I'll look for that too.

"June 2050" by Pepe Moreno - 7 - Another nice one-pager on the "June 2050" idea, by Pepe Moreno.  Many years ago, Pepe Moreno had some things in Heavy Metal Magazine, notably "Rebel" in 1985, and "Gene Kong" in 2016 in #278 and #279, which I really liked.  I want to think he just did this June 2050 just for this issue, and I'd like to see more new ones from even more creators.

"Bug Hunt" by Justin Jordan, Elgo, Jaime, Frank Forte - 7 - The last remaining member of the advance planetary colony expedition, makes it safe for the rest of the colonists' arrival.  Pretty good art and I thought the story was told really well.

"Burton & Cyb" by José Ortiz and Antonio Segura - 5 - Translated by R.G. Llarena, Frank Forte with the edits.  This one is called "El Gato".  The two miscreants get saddled with a cat-robot babysitter, but figure out how to profit from it.  So does the cat.

"Dream Invasion" by Amilcar Pinna - 7 - Nice dream, if you like eyeballs.

A fake ad for an alien-abduction app was worth a chuckle.

"Taarna - Rebirth" by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Anna Morozova, Tom Napolitano, Chris Thompson, Dave Kelly - 5 - It's Part 2.  Taarna flees desert marauders to be trapped in a cave, by women who sacrifice Taarna to their deity.  Who empowers Taarna to save her captors.  Or something.  Again the art is pretty nice looking, but the story doesn't come together for me.  It seems not much more than an excuse to parade Taarna around naked for a few pages.

"The Birds of Margli" by Matthew M Bartlett - 6 - With Axel Medellin providing a couple of illustrations, and Cody Goodfellow noted as Editor.  A hitman in the not-too-far future takes a job, but gets the raw end of the deal.  It's brief and pretty well written, though I'd enjoy a bit more depth, which would make it longer.  Unfortunately spelled "Marghli" in the Contents.

"Dominoes" by Dalton Cara, Matheus Sant' Anna, Jacob Bascle - 7 - An ambitious hacker breaks in to the highest reaches of government.  Pretty cool art and a brisk pace make it a fun read, it seems short.

"Dream Invasion" by Carlos Dearmas & Omar Estévez - 8 - The illustration indeed caught my attention with "a potential cascade of nameless fantasies and obsessions" as it said, and I enjoyed finding more as I looked more.

Metal Detector is a one-page interview with Adrián Castilla, who does the art for the following feature.

"Fireshot" by Rodrigo Lucio, Adrián Castilla, JAME, R.G. Llarena - 7 - That shot's got quite a kick to it.  Simple enough premise, with a fun resolution.  Looks plenty cool.

"The Ancient Pact" by Axel Medellin Machain, Carlos Cabrera, Grissel Solis, JAME, R.G. Llarena - 6 - A youth enters a bar, challenges the tough guy to a fight.  Not bad in its story nor art, but I don't get the references ("Cernunnos", "Oillipheist"?) so I am missing something(s) here.

"Sixella - The Last Roots" by Janevsky, Dave Kelly - 6 - This is Part 2.  I think I'm getting better at figuring out what's going on.  It's pretty and the colored shading seems less overwhelming to me.  The protagonist (maybe) sets up some system to save some plants, then heads to town for fun.  Beds a robot hooker but returns too late to save the farm, to be captured by the same robot(?).  Am I close?

"Sacrifice" by Antonio Marinetti, Jacob Bascle, R.G. Llarena - 7 - Viewing a manacled corpse, and then  flying though a desolate landscape, and a giant skeleton á la Taarna, an explorer is drawn into the objective's room.  And sheds his body.  And it works.  It's worth a couple reads.

"Gladiatrix" by John Stanisci, Dan Gordon, Dave Baron, Tom Napolitano, Dave Kelly - 6 - First with "The Trials of Ta-Neen" then "Part Two Fall" and also "Special Thanks to Vlas and Charley Parlapanides".  The Gladiatrix fights to survive the arena.  I was losing interest in the fight and the internal struggle, but falling impaled in an unknown land suddenly increased some suspense.

"The Blob" by Valentin Ramón, R.G. Llarena - 7 - Loser schlub signs up for The Blob.  It changes his life.  Pretty clever, with a Corben joke.

"Dream Invasion" by Camila Torrano - 7 - Three city dwellers have different reactions when the sky opens to the space between worlds.

A fake ad for Heavy Metal's adopt a micro Black Hole offer appears.

"A Brief Encounter" by Marco Nizzoli, Jacob Bascle, R.G. Llarena - 6 - It has a "Dédié à Moebius" at the title, and it shows, in a noble effort to implement a Moebius-like style.  I may have enjoyed it more if the protagonist had less of the vacuous vanity about him.

"Carmen Bond" by Alfonso Font, Frank Forte - 7 - Satan tempts a wise man with babes.  It takes a while, but he finds the right one.  Fun old-time EU art style.

"Dream Invasion" by Lalit Kumar Sharma, Oscar Carreño - 6 - Pretty picture and text, I wish they went together better.

"Millstone" by Michael W Conrad, Ilias Kyriazis, Nikki Spanou, Simon Bowland, Chris Thompson - 8 - The champion, chained to his millstone, encounters a crooked stone hut in the Pynchost Forest.  Whereupon horrors are unleashed.  He survives, to encounter more demons.  Then he gets all fwunked up.  It's something to see.  I'm enjoying this one, it's not overloaded with word balloons, the art tells much of the story.

"Dream Invasion by Santi Gullén and Fares Maese - 6 - Again the art and text don't come together for me.  Maybe only those who look for nothing have eyes to see.  But I did see that this one did not make it onto the Contents page.

"A Look Back at the Madness" seems it will be a recurring feature, with perhaps misleading interpretations of past bits of the magazine.  This one is about the ads, and it does showcase some good ones, especially the "Bring Heavy Metal Home With You" subscription ad, which sometimes came as a card insert.  The "We Want Your Money" was the ad with the "silk" jacket.  They should have shown the belt buckle ad that was often on this page too.  But, it's not all ads.  The "Computer Art Systems" blurb came from a Dossier article from January 1984.  The Freak Show Girl was a Drew Friedman bit.  The girl getting groped was from "Lann", a story from late 1984.  At least I can be glad someone is actually paging through magazines for these.

"Sleepy Boy" by Wayshak - 6 - The guy doesn't quite present a likable sympathetic character, but he's somehow crushed by the invisible weight of his own nightmares.  Really energetic mostly black and white art.

"Ink" by Charley & Vlas Parlapanides, Marco Failla, Riccardo Brusca, Tom Napolitano, Yi Yang, Dave Kelly - 6 - Apparently, a thug is killed, then revived with tattoos.  It's "to be continued ..." so we'll see where this one goes.

"Valentina" by Sergio Gerasi, Vik Deluca, Tom Williams, Chris Thompson - 7 - This is Part 2, and it's with an "Inspired by the Work of Guido Crepax" note as well.  Valentina accepts a project to have her photography work integrated with "artificial intelligence software".  She can't help but fall for someone and have more nightmares.  Poor dear.  But this is full of fantastic imagery, and it's interesting to have representations of the Spanish Civil War photo "The Falling Soldier" and a shot of Fidel Castro on the wall of a meeting room.

"Dream Invasion" by John Bivens and Michael Woods - 7 - When mutation becomes religion.

Metal Strips - 7 - A mixed bag with The Bus by Paul Kirchner again (still), Caveman by Tayyar Özkan (again), commodified Harry Canyon and Zeke and Edsel again, and a new Tales of the Loc-Nar by Frank Forte.  A nice mix of fun.

Another "Look Back on the Madness" bit, this time it features Tex Arcana by John Findley.  This was one of my favorites from back in its day, fantastic and fun storytelling and terrific black and white art.  This feature is a decent taste.  I've written about Tex Arcana several times over the years, and while it's been 10 years since it's been updated, the three books published in Heavy Metal Magazine are all online at Mr Findley's texarcana.com site, as well as a fourth uncompleted book.  Which I highly recommend.  And the compiled first three books is still apparently available for purchase via the internet.

"Habemus Papam" by Claudio Alvarez, Geraldo Borges, Arthur Hesli, JAME, R.G. Llarena - 6 - Sorcerers send their forms to battle a demon, expiring as they fail, until they don't.

Thoughts

I've had Thoughts over the past several months, during the reboot of Heavy Metal Magazine.  It's been interesting to consider how the process seemed to me, and where it, and I, have ended up to this point.

First, is the realization that it's not my Heavy Metal Magazine any more.  It never really was "mine" but I felt like I was fairly tuned in, with following it through the years and through its demise.  When I rediscovered Heavy Metal around 2005, and I found first Lostboy's still-excellent heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com (by searching for the interview with Timothy Leary in the October 1983 issue), and then the Heavy Metal Magazine website at the time, I became an active participant in the discussion forums on each, which led directly to me creating this teensy blog in 2011 when first Lostboy's then Heavy Metal's forums closed, mostly unable to stem the spam overwhelming them.  

Since then, even with online discussion moved to social media without me, I felt buying the mag regularly and making my review posts, and reading about some stuff on the internet, (and missing the 'oh god, Taarna is wearing clothes!!!' whining completely until after, thankfully) I still felt I was somewhat in touch.

Now, my ignorance and intransigence have been laid bare, witnessing the mayhem of the Discords.  It's a blistering pace that I can't keep up with.  I simply don't fit in with the meme-slingin' manga-referencin' comics-knowin' con-goin' general Heavy Metal fan base.  I'm too old and too of-my-time to keep up with the modern internet landscape.  And there seems to be nobody else on the Discord who was around at the beginning, and before the 1981 movie, who can relate to what the magazine started as.

But I can still hold a paper magazine in my hands and read it (with glasses) and operate an old-fashioned laptop keyboard, and write my little blog posts to cast adrift to the cosmos.  And I think at this point I get to have a unique perspective that I value enough to rant about online, and I figure I can do it for a while more (probably not another 20 years though).   So I will.

With the first issue received and reviewed, I was pretty pleased I liked it as much as I did.  Knowing I am not in their target audience has adjusted my viewpoints somewhat, but my impression is that the efforts are pretty sincere, even when there's something I think is so dumb as to be incomprehensible (like the Rock Opera segment claiming it was the letters section way back when).  I really wasn't sure what to expect, and I was concerned there would be much less inventive and creative work from a wide range of creators, my favorite part of the anthology format, and much more routine lifeless overcommercialized crap in the pages.  But that didn't quite happen.  So I look forward to upcoming issues.

Another thought on my mind is about the commodification of Taarna, and other characters from the 1981 Heavy Metal Movie.  I still am amused by how Taarna would not exist if HM and Moebius could have agreed on how to bring Arzak into the movie, and how derivative Taarna is of Harzakc.  

And how it is not.  Creating Taarna as an ass-kickin' woman warrior worked great in the movie, and I think it's a great foundation to build on, Heavy Metal as a place filled with badass chicks (etc).  While Taarna was mostly forgotten as a HM character until recently, there was the (late) great Julie Strain (wiki, imdb), who certainly made her mark in the annals of Heavy Metal female badassery, as Mr Eastman's muse, and other contributing artists', in the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine, and even into the Heavy Metal 2000 FAKK2 movie and game as the main character Julie.  (It'd be fantastic for Heavy Metal to acknowledge Julie Strain's position in Heavy Metal Magazine history, though I imagine the chances of that are slim to none)

(BTW, see https://www.taarna.net/ for a cool Taarna fan site from way back. )

But I can hope that HM will continue to bring bodacious warrior babes like Gladiatrix and Evil Sex Bitch to us in the mag, and more like them.  Still, I'm not excited about making Taarna HM's Mouse, with ever-more desperate and unengaging pieces with images of Taarna their only redeeming feature.  (Same goes for Nelson and Grimaldi.)

Legacy #322 (the new #2) should be appearing soon.  Relating to the whiney folks who backed the Kickstarter and were peeved that the new Issue #1 appeared in stores before theirs were shipped, the HM response was to label the backers as the Angry Mob, and a promise of a free #2 (just pay shipping!) and other baubles.  A whole other social media network for me to not keep up with, was generated for the Angry Mob, ensuring a steady stream of breathless announcements and promotional considerations clogging my email.  A custom #2 cover was generated and promised to go only to the mobbites.  After the new issue #2 emerged publicly at the San Diego comicon, before shipping on orders, more whining ensued.  It's tough to withstand the whining, I'm sure, but I sure hope HM stops overpromising and needing to backtrack and make more promises.  It looks terrible.  And personally I think the whole Angry Mob thing is kinda dumb and almost insulting, to label the all backers such for the whining of the few loudest.  I only kept up to be able to order the "free" issue, and that finally happened, so I can quit paying attention to that noise soon.

Besides that, bot traffic on my little blog has exploded the last few months, hundreds of random post hits a day.  "Ordinarily" there would be a dozen or so.  I've only got a couple hundred posts total.  Blog stats say it's mostly from Brazil, Vietnam and Netherlands following.  It hit a peak a few weeks ago, dropped to almost normal traffic for a number of days, then shot up again.  I have no idea what damage they may be causing, and I hope none to any of the few legitimate visitors.

Well, glad to belch those thoughts into the internet.  While I'm becoming an even crankier old man, and even more willing to spout my Opinions, I am grateful for Heavy Metal Magazine's return, for what it has returned as, and for my ability to enjoy it as I do.  And I remain hopeful it will keep going for a good while longer.  

Heavy Metal #1 (Legacy #321)

Behold, the return of Heavy Metal Magazine!

Phfmeh welcomes my new issue to the gang.

Defying all doubt, including my own.  Heavy Metal Magazine really did die and come back from the dead.  Somehow I'm still really old and still reading Heavy Metal Magazine.  I'm grateful to all at HM who made this happen, and I hope they keep making it happen.  Much more to think and say about the whole thing, but I've been waiting to review this new issue for a long while, so I'll just get to it.

And it's a lot.  It's huge, almost twice as thick as usual, though it's the same size, and has fine glossy pages at least as nice as I recall.  At 232 pages, it's the biggest Heavy Metal Magazine issue ever.  With essentially zero ads.  A few for HM swag and subscriptions, a couple fake ones, but it's otherwise nothin' but "content" as they say.

It's wild that this is Issue #001 again:

(The "real" Issue Number 1:)

I selected the #1A cover by Greg Hildebrandt.  I'd seen it and was impressed before, so I didn't even look too hard at other options.  Very sad Mr Hildebrandt passed away before this was published.  We're fortunate to have this.

Immediately, Frank Forte provides an Editorial.  It seems he's cranking the hype machine up to 11*, but somehow I'm still optimistic that his intentions are fairly sincere.  I'm still grateful someone was willing to put their name on the effort to resurrect Heavy Metal Magazine, and that it actually worked.

The Contents pages are extensive, listing all the many items in the issue, plus a list of cover artists, and an illustration by Erwin Papa, a handle I recognize from the HM Discord.

Then there's Dossier.  Heavy Metal Magazine's Dossier was part of the magazine from the early 80's, through the Monthly Era's end with December 1985.  It was resurrected in the 90s for a number of years through the 00s.  It was usually several articles on music or art or technology or books or movies, etc.  And it was often fun and sometimes informative.  It's where I heard of Nash the Slash.  It's where Lou Stathis sang praise to Eno.  It's where Kevin Eastman was mentioned regarding the Ninja Turtles success, with Peter Laird, in the February 1985 issue:

Funny how that success enabled Mr Eastman to buy Heavy Metal Magazine, less than 10 years later.

This edition of Dossier begins with a review of the future, by Frank Forte, as described in popular culture sci-fi and Heavy Metal, which hits lots of good familiar notes.  Like Star Trek communicators, and "The Long Tomorrow" to "Blade Runner", the Jetsons and Star Wars, and then it glances at "AI" as it gazes into itself for the future.  I think this does a fair job on a topic that could be worth several more than two pages.  The other two pages of this Dossier follow the template of years ago with a few articles of a few paragraphs each on a handful of topics.  This won't get a rating from me, but I do hope Dossier will continue.

"Alien Disclosure" - 6 - These appear to be one page bits on the topic of aliens among us, with different creators getting a stab at it.  This first instance in not credited, a cyborg discovering CDs in space perhaps.

"Bug" by Enki Bilal - 7 - More terrific work from Enki Bilal, an early stalwart of Heavy Metal Magazine.  The story is about all digital data disappearing across the globe.  The world doesn't immediately descend into apocalyptic chaos, somehow.  Maybe it's all the high cheekbones and thousand yard stares.  Maybe this will capture my imagination like "The Color of Air", "Animal'z", and "Julia and Roem" did, the three "newer" Bilal entries in Heavy Metal Magazine in the 2010s.

"Alien Disclosure" by Ladrönn - 6 - I'll quote it:  "It was in the morning news.  Thousands of UFOs from outer space arrived earth causing havoc all around the world.  Humanity was sure only in one thing, they do not come in peace".

There's a fake ad on pg 30 for The Ultimate Doomsday Bunker by heavymetalendtimes.com, which sadly is not a real web site.  Pretty funny, but it's not credited that I could see, so no rating.

"Heavy History" by Joshua Sky - 6 - "A Crash Chronicle of Heavy Metal Illustrated"  I hesitated to give this a rating, since it's not really a creative work.  Joshua Sky has taken the task of writing a history of Heavy Metal Magazine, for this first issue of the re-incarnated magazine.  An impossible and thankless task, that will be necessarily incomplete, it needed some creative work to at least cover the span of time and history in a mere few pages.  So it gets a rating.  I mostly liked it, the hype was only turned up to 10-1/2, and it covered much.  But with some gaps and conflations, and what must be the necessary elevating of Taarna to "Heavy Metal's flagship character", it diverges greatly from what Heavy Metal Magazine means to me.  (fyi, Taarna was almost forgotten as a character until recent years.  And Heavy Metal Magazine less "evolved" from Metal Hurlant, than was derived from it, initially.)  But since I'm just a cranky old guy, and not their target audience, big effin' deal.

"The Mercenary" by Vincente Segrelles - 8 - An armoured mercenary flying on a winged dragon, lands on a mysterious island.  He escapes with his life, for the moment.  The Mercenary appeared occasionally in Heavy Metal Magazine in the 80s mostly, and Vincente Segrelles seems to have produced many of them over the many years, and it's great to have an example here. I have read that these stories are completely painted in oils.  I'd like seeing more of this.

"Alien Disclosure" by ELGO - 7 - The Presidential candidate is revealed as a parasitic alien.  Cool contemperaneousity.  Except there aren't enough people videoing on their phones.

"Cold Dead War - The Aftermath" by Craig Wilson, Frank Forte, Adam Wollet - 7 - This is another installment of Cold Dead War, which is a story created from a character Nelson in the Heavy Metal Movie, one of the zombies on the plane in the B-17 segment.  Another more recent attempt to mine characters that HM actually owns, along with Taarna, and the Loc-Nar, to build their little universe.  I enjoyed this one more than the previous entries.  I thought the art was good and the storytelling was better.  The "Ploog" name tag was an amusing reference to Mike Ploog who worked on the B-17 segment.  I almost expect to hear more from the Loc-Nar characterization like this one.

"June 2050" by John Workman - 8 - An amazing blast from the past.  Not only was June 2050 a feature in Heavy Metal Magazine in the early 80s, John Workman was the Magazine's Art Director for much of its early history.  Nice to have a fun little one-pager like this now.

"Burton & Cyb" by José Ortiz and Antonio Segura - 5 - A couple space traffickers end up in a haunted castle with their passengers.  Burton and Cyb were a popular entry in Heavy Metal Magazine in the late 80s through the 90s.  They have their charms, but I wasn't the biggest fan, and this one doesn't change my mind.

"Tribute to Greg Hildebrandt" by Ian Spelling - An affectionate reminiscence of Greg Hildebrandt.  Six pages with a handful of images by Mr Hildebrandt.

"Alien Disclosure" by Axel Medellin and Carlos Cabrera - 7 - A pretty cool image, of androids (or people?) assaulted/assimilated? by flying discs.  From which the uncredited image of the initial Alien Disclosure page was taken.

"Evil Sex Bitch" by Steve Mannion - 6 - The titular character searches the wasteland for victims.  And looks great doing it.  I'd probably enjoy this more, if this was a bit more than an introduction, and but for some maddening inconsistencies (tube top or no tube top, hood scoop or no hood scoop, that kind of thing).  But that's just me.

"Taarna - Rebirth" by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Anna Morozova, Ellie Wright, Tom Napolitano, Chris Thompson, Dave Kelly - 5 - Taarna, apparently reborn, battles some pretty brown-looking bad guys, and lives to fight again.  The art is pretty good, but I struggled engaging a story line with the images.  The action and "dialog" didn't usually seem to progress or follow continuously.  It was just one scene then the other.  As this is probably the continuation of the commodification of Taarna (etc), and more can be expected, I really hope I can enjoy future efforts more than this one.

There's a "Look Back at the Madness" page featuring Den  by Richard Corben.  Very nice, and they make a point of including Den's dick.

"Ffloydd the Giant Killer" by Michael L Peters - 7 - Let it be said "... Ffloydd was very brave ..."  A fun and nice looking one-pager.  I dig that.

"Lester - That Old Feeling"" by Fernando Dagnino, Andrew Scott, Chris Thompson - 7 - A companion robot becomes a famous musician.  It looks fine, it tells its tale well, it's evocative and dramatic.  Too bad its emotional impact is dulled by a typo in a defining moment ("... for the firts time ...")

"They Dug Too Deep" by Dwayne Harris - 6 - Dwarves defend their subterranean home.  Great looking art, fun little story, though it's barely more than a joke.

"Austin Grimaldi by Keron Grant, Josh Sky, Frank Forte, Adam Wollet - 7 - Austin Grimaldi returns home from his business trip.  Almost immediately he's in an action movie car chase.  Riffing on the Grimaldi sequence in the Heavy Metal 1981 Movie, it appears the commodification will continue until morale improves.  The art is expertly crafted and moves briskly, as the story tries to keep up with a zillion little speech balloons.

An ad for Heavy Metal Rumble, a dating site that appears to be merely a parody fake.  A pity.  Cool drawing, initialed "JM25" for a credit.

"Alien Disclosure" by Katie Houghton-Ward - 7 - Aliens won't always come from the skies.

"Gladiatrix" by John Stanisci, Dave Baron, Tom Napolitano, Dave Kelly - 7 - With a "The Trials of Ta-Neen Part 1" side bar, and Special Thanks to Vlas and Charley Parlapanides.  The Gladiatrix enters the arena.  Much bloodletting ensues.  Energetic art and a small story told with many word balloons.  A two page action scene wisely avoids trying an actual two-page spread, but cleverly fills the open magazine.

"Millstone" by Michael W Conrad, Ilias Kyriazis, Simon Bowland, Chris Thompson - 8 - The greatest warrior survives his sacrifice to the elder gods, and he wants to know why.  An all-knowing ghost child, a cloistered wizard, manacled genitalia, I find myself wanting to know more as well.  Good thing it's "to be continued".

"Alien Disclosure" by Luis Guaragna and Felipe Sobreiro - 6 - The "Outer Powers" set in motion the brutal fate of the human race.

"The Devil's Teeth" by Lia Bozonelis - 6 - With an illustration by Agustin Alessia.  A well done very short story describing the historical perils of the Farallon Islands.  The illustration is good, though it suffers greatly by being subjected to a foolhardy attempt at a two page spread.  It looks spooky.  The well known wildlife refuge must be on the other side of the islands.

On page 150, something made me think "what the ever-lovin' fuck is this?"  A page full of clips from "Scorchin' Peppers Burned My Hard Love Gland", which was an entry in the long-running Rock Opera, from the January 1985 issue.  NOT the letters section, as indicated on these pages, that was Chain Mail.  Perhaps a joke, I was not amused.  Think of the poor children, not really knowing this was supposed to be funny.  Surely it's more old guy cranky talkin', but I really liked Rock Opera back in the day, and in one of my earliest reviews, I'd said: "The evolution of this story from a couple panels to a humongous blob, belching satire and invective, leaving behind a slimy trail, kept me buying the magazine for a while." and I got annoyed at this attempt to be humorous.

A shot at the page that hurt my feelings:

And for my own benefit, here is "Scorchin" Peppers Burned My Hard Love Gland" from January 1985 in its entirety:

Yes, it was really like that.  Yes, my photographs are lame.

And a shot of Chain Mail from that January 1985 issue while I'm at it:

There, now I feel better.

"Legends of Taarna" by Matt & Shawn Fillbach, JML, Joseph Michael Linsner - 5 - The commodification will continue until morale improves.  A new Taarna tale.  With technically good art and a story twist.

"Sixella - The Last Roots" by Janevsky, Dave Kelly - 6 - Fourteen pages of someone doing something, perhaps about recovering ancient life forms.  This appears to be a part of a Euro BD series, from a few years ago, that we came into the middle of.  Looking about it, I saw some images with just black and white line art, and I feel I may have enjoyed this one more if the pretty coloring did less obscuring of the nice line art.  Perhaps more will come, it ends with "Sixella will return".

"Kecksburg UFO" by Jim Rugg - 7 - A documentation style story about UFO reports from Kecksburg PA from 1965.  A fun retelling for a comic story, reminding me of the first War of the Worlds movie in its look and pacing, and it leans in to the conspiracy and coverup side of its story.  I used to enjoy a good conspiracy theory, because it was fun to consider alternatives, though I never gave government enough credit to actually pull something off.  Now not so much.  Lots of the stuff out there is too stupid and dangerous to be funny, and unbelievably, believed by too many.

"Cobot" by Jonathan Washak - 7 - A convict, lashed and bound and sentenced to walk the badlands until death, appears to be tracked by a hacker over a satellite uplink.  Who attempts to animate an infantry robot to aid the convict.  It appears it didn't work.  With essentially no dialog, I had some trouble following, but there's some good storytelling going on.  I enjoyed the line art, how the details can really focus on what's being conveyed in the story.  

"Transcendensity" by David Quinn, Tim Vigil, Omar Estévez, Frank Forte - 6 - Colorfully, a being emerges, spawned from the earth, submerges, and rises to the stars.  Thankfully, he gets a dick.

"Valentina" by Sergio Gerasi, Vik Deluca, Tom Williams, Chris Thompson - 7 - With an "Inspired by the Work of Guido Crepax", referring to the Valentina creator who appeared in Heavy Metal Magazine in the 80s.  Valentina laments a lost lover, and gains an admirer, and dreams the same nightmare again and again.  Noted as Part One and ending with a "To Be Continued".  It's pretty good, with emotional depth and I enjoy good black and white drawing.  It may not be the same as Crepax's Valentina, but this has its own value.

For fun, a shot from this Valentina:

And a shot of the beginning of Crepax's Valentina the Pirate, from November 1983:

"All American" by Jason Pell, Jok - 7 - The cold war fought with giant robot fighters.  An amusing joke in the fight, and the story takes a turn to a more personal view with the USA pilot.  Jok was part of a handful of HM entries in the early 2020's.  

"Alien Disclosure" by Agustin Alessio - 7 - A poster of  a buff lizard guy, holding a mostly naked woman, selling "New" Atlas 5.0, whatever that is.  The accompanying text described how "they" stopped hiding and came open about their aims, hinting about their demise.  Agustin Alessio also did the illustration for "The Devil's Teeth" in this issue.

I enjoyed the fake ad for Heavy Metal ass wipe, and I enjoyed the "Look Back at the Madness Mayhem" page, including some Xalabarder and the climactic (!) scene from The Long Tomorrow from August 1977.

"Metal Strips" - 7 - Four half-page stories.  I like this idea, similar to the "Strip Tease" features in some of the mid-90s.  The Bus by Paul Kirchner, which may be a reprint but maybe not.  Gunk by Curt Merlo, which is two pieces with a circular framing.  Harry Canyon and Zeke & Edsel by Frank Forte with Josh Sky are two more little stories extrapolating from their bits in the Heavy Metal 1981 Movie, and I may enjoy these bits of commodification the most so far.

Then, there are pages of different cover variants for this issue #321.  Sixteen of them, and that's not all of them, somehow.  Then another fanciful reminiscence of what the magazine wasn't.

Phew, that's all of it.  A big issue.  I'm glad it exists and I have one.  I'm glad Heavy Metal Magazine returned from the dead, and I hope it stays not-dead for years to come.  And I'm glad the mag is as good as it is.  It may even get better, and it could be a lot worse.  Thanks again for making it happen HM gang.  I hope to get Legacy #322 soon.

*Since over 20 years ago I had to tell some kids what "turn it up to 11" was about, and what Spinal Tap was, I think I'll explain it again.  The ageless classic movie "This is Spinal Tap" depicts an 80s rock band trying to regain their past glories, and the guitarist Nigel explains that the volume on his custom amp goes up to 11, since it's one louder than 10 on most normal amps.  It's as nonsensical as it sounds, and lots of fun.  Nowadays I believe it's a bit more widely known.  But also, a while back I was playing the Heavy Metal 1981 movie soundtrack in my car, and a friend, on entering the passenger door, asked "is this Spinal Tap?", and it fits.  I laughed so very hard.