The Love Special. I got the newsstand cover A, "Demonheart" by Florian Bertner. A pink heart valentine. I enjoyed discerning that the background and the heart shape's border foliage are essentially mirrored images, while the demon is not. And the bucket of tentacles. It gets a 7 from me.
Another actual ad for an actual movie inside the front cover, for a movie I actually saw before the issue came out.
The contents page is illustrated by the controversial cover C, "Lapins d'Amour" by James Jean, so it was nice of them to make this available to all who get the mag, even those who got their issue with the cover C....
Also a couple new names on the contents page, Sarah Deal as Contributing Editor, and Jett Lucas as Coordinator (this is where I mention that Jett Lucas is in a recent deal with HM to publish a weed "edutainment" magazine. weed has its place in HM's advertising history, so does booze, and porn. and comics and t-shirts and posters and movies and albums and turntables and.... I'm not sure what to think about this new effort, so I'll wait to see where it goes).
Mr. Morrison's editoral is but a single page, but with such a breadth of verbal hyperventilation as to equal any of his other efforts in wackiness. Using food-based descriptions of the mag's entries, allows access to hosts of nouns, as well as adjectives. I admit I didn't get the abbreviated admonitions at the end, but the semi-literal bleeding heart valentine graphic was kinda neat.
Ai Shiteru! by JD Morvan and Liberatore - 5 - After some anticipation of Liberatore's return to HM's pages, I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps my own fault for whatever expectations I set. The Liberatore art and the Morvan story start out interesting enough, a gaijin works up the courage to approach the object of his adoration, a girl working for a "maid cafe", but the ending, of the art and story, seemed sudden and incomplete, superficial, to me. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for deranged obsession today.
The Color of Air by Enki Bilal - 7 - Still brooding and mysterious, I'm enjoying seeing the various storylines unfold, and wondering how they will tie together. That and the many lovely bits of art. Pretty dark in there though. The terror zeppelin full of explosives and nuclear waste is extra silly.
Lure by Matias Lázaro and Chas! Pangburn - 6 - (Chas! gets first billing on the contents page). Unexpected fauna at a deep sea lab site. This one was a bit uneven for me. There's some good storytelling going on, and some nice drawing work, but there were some spots that I was less impressed by. Like why was she still there, alone for weeks in a submerged lab?
Zentropa by John Mahoney - 7 - Though I noticed a few annoying things, like a couple instances of excess pixellation and inconsistent coloring, there's still lots of scrutinizing fun to be had. Just imagining generating 3D characters and moving them about to create images, noticing creative copying and mirroring, things that aren't noticed until the second or third look, that kind of thing. What I thought might be an emerging storyline doesn't seem to be, maybe the skeletal character, with some organs and veins but no flesh but his dick, is taking us somewhere.
Artist's Studio by Rubens LP - 5 - With an interview by Rantz Hoseley, and Sarah Deal as contributing editor. While it's an interesting and appealing style, the poses seem obviously lifted from porn, and diminish rather than enhance the attractiveness of the art for me.
Frankenstein Unrequited by Dean Haspiel - 7 - It's like a monster movie battle royale, with Frankenstein's Bride storming the castle to avenge her love. I don't know who the bald guy at the end is though. Sometimes the art seems hasty, and silly (bazooka), but it puts up a furious pace and tells quite the wordless story.
They Lived Happily Ever After by Fernando Baldo - 6 - This time it's the girl who slays the dragon to enter the castle tower to wake the sleeping prince from his spell, but it's a joke. A pretty good joke, I'll admit.
Gutt Ghost: The Letters of the Beast by Enzo Garza - 6.5 - I kinda like this guy from the last entry in # 283, and I'm glad I was wrong about never seeing it again, and this story of meeting a blind date and then his ex is kinda insightful. But now I wonder about what else is in the story I don't know. Maybe more is to come.
"Lil Charlie" Part 2 by John Bivens and Omar Estévez - 6 - While the three of god's charges proceed destroying creation, a new being Lilith is created, making this a potentially more interesting story. I got a bit lost near the end, but it says continued so I hope I get to figure it out.
Tattoo Gallery by Brando Chiesa - 5 - I'm not very excited by a tattoo gallery in HM, but I will say the art depicted is very cool. Though the images of mostly shaved arms are pasted onto some background, making me wonder about other effects that have been applied, and after a while they start looking pretty the same, there's some nice skill and technique on display.
Salsa Invertebraxta by Mozchops (noted as Part 5 on the contents page, but I believe it's the 6th and last entry) - 8.5 - Yayyy! That was fun. My appreciation of the art and story, and even the poetry, grew as this went on. I enjoyed the lush style and bright colors and brilliant imagination, and the dark parts too. I enjoyed noticing there were protagonists, and I enjoyed their hijinks. I enjoyed figuring out that the creatures depicted were much more imagined than real (angular egg-carrying robot drone!). I even enjoyed the hokey "circle of life" thing. Fun to see. Thanks.
Artist Spotlight by James Jean, interview by Rantz Hoseley - 7 - Mr Jean gets some fine praise in the introduction, some nice work is displayed. An interesting paragraph is a short description of how he came to do the "Lapins d'Amour" Cover C art.
Mythopia by Grant Morrison, Andy Belanger, Omar Estévez, Serge LaPointe - 6 - A rather farcical telling of many SF/Fantasy tropes. It's pretty nice to look at, and even I got some of the jokes, but its tongue is so firmly in its cheek, it's hard to understand what it's saying.
The back cover is another actual ad for an actual movie, that I wanted to see but was actually out of the theaters before I was able to.
