Welcome to fred's HM mag fan blog. The intent is to post reviews, past and present, of Heavy Metal magazine issues and related items.
Opinions are my own, except when they're not.
Disclaimer: I'm just a fan of HM magazine, I'm trying to find something to like. Sometimes I need to try harder than other times. I'm not a big comics fan, I'm not very well read, and this is barely a hobby. However, thanks to the awesome power of the internet, I can post my little rantings. What fun.
Paul Kirchner did The Bus in Heavy Metal Magazine, from the second issue until 1985, the end of the monthly era. I really liked it, it did a lot of storytelling in less than half a page, and thought it was a big part of what made HM what it was to me. He did several other stories in that time that I liked, like The Temple of Karvul in February 1979 and Critical Mass of Cool in November 1984. Maybe I didn't think his art was the most spectacular in the mag, but it was very good in stories that made you think.
There was a return of The Bus in HM #276, and I had hoped for more, but I haven't come across it. He does sell books including a couple The Bus compilations.
The Bristol Board recently had some Dope Rider stories listed, which is what got me thinking about this. Dope Rider was in High Times way back when, and it appears Mr Kirchner is producing new stories. It wasn't in HM, but it's pretty cool regardless. Check it out.
(man that webpage really hates my computer, takes forever to load with all the crap and ads)
Rantz Hoseley has "left the company" it says. Nothing on what he's doing or even a thank you.
Tim Seeley is apparently a well-known comics guy, and the article has Mr Eastman and others saying how great Tim is. No word from or about Mr Morrison. Comments on the article and the fbook post are all over the place, most like Mr Seeley and think Mr Morrison will hang on, though some seem even more clueless than me.
For me, it just came to me how HM has been trying to merge with comics, which I've been in denial of for a while. I still thought of Heavy Metal as "The Adult Illustrated Fantasy Magazine" and comics were more lightweight and transient, but with the popular culture impact of comics these days, I can realize why HM might want to seem a part of that.
I'm also a bit annoyed about such an announcement by a fbook link to another article, rather than directly from HM, but I guess that's just how they do things, when they don't have much of a PR stance, as seen by the haphazard nature of the HM internet presence. (it's been over a year since the main website has had anything new.)
So best of luck to Mr Seeley, and I hope he does at least as good of an interview as Mr Hoseley.
R. M. Rhodes has a great little article on his heavymetalmagazine.wordpress.com about the history of Heavy Metal Magazine cover prices, which includes history of the tagline, which was "The Adult Illustrated Fantasy Magazine" for a good while, with some discussion of the issue format going from monthly to quarterly to bimonthly to whatever it is now, including just numbering issues rather than noting the month or period and year. For fun I lifted the chart from the article:
The article nicely gathers these bits of info and helped my understanding of these trivial but interesting details of the history of Heavy Metal Magazine. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Ben Michael Byrne revived Kranburn last year, after dropping it in favor of other stuff, and there was a link to "Printed Kranburn" that never materialized. I had seen some references to new issues coming but I never found where to buy them, since he seems to be most active on Fbook, but I ain't on that so I don't get very far, until Mr Byrne recently put up a link on his Twtr, to his updated Ownaindi listing. Ownaindi is a site for Australian comics, where he was selling his NSEW (also pretty cool) before, and though it could be problematic, it worked for me to get them. He's gone and printed all the old Kranburns, and the new ones, and the NSEW, as well as something called Ektype (I have no idea what this is, but I want it anyway). I went and ordered everything I didn't already have. So this is great news for people like me, who really liked Kranburn and Mr Byrne's work, and are fortunate enough to afford to buy printed comics shipped halfway around the world.
