Monday, July 28, 2014

wdv dot Heavy Metal dot com

I'm dawdling with reviews, Kranburn #10 and HM #269, and a couple other things, await time and motivation from me.  Maybe I'll still get one out this week.

However, it's noteworthy that HM has significantly changed its website layout and format, so I thought I'd drop a couple thoughts. 

The www. link on my links page is directed to a wdv. site.  I haven't figured out the wdv thing, but the format appears adapted for mobile/tablet type viewing, and the layout looks more f-book-y.

It seems the change was timed for the SD ComicCon, and there's a couple features on the Con, including some from Steve Ringgenberg, who did a few years of the return of Dossier in the mag (it's been a couple years since it last appeared though).  There's also some features with some video, TMNT trailers (yawn) and something about heavy metal music going soft (?).

It's interesting that the "Shop" button directs to the "old" website shop pages.  Otherwise it appears all links to the past site are gone.  It was intriguing to see the "Issues" button, it does appear to contain a page for each issue of the mag, with a list of contents and artists.  (I didn't count them, but it looks like all the "regular" issues are there, but none of the Specials.  It's almost hard to believe it's been three years since they stopped producing those Special issues.)  There's also a "review" box that caught my attention, but it's a farcebook thing so I'm not likely to join. 

There's so much crap going on with feeds and crawlers on the site that it really bogs down on my cheap notebook.  It appears more deeply tied to f-book and other trending/tracking stuff, so maybe that has something to do with it.  The changes are kind of interesting to me, if not very exciting.  We'll see how it goes now that the Con is done.