Heavy Metal #298

 Heavy Metal #298 is called the "Furthest Reaches Special".  I got the Cover B by Gabriel Ippoliti, "Recalculating":

 

Image lifted from Lonestar Comics ( mycomicshop.com where I got it from, back in April ).

While the contents page still credits Peter Kleinman for the logo, this is the first issue without Kevin Eastman listed as the Publisher, since the 90s?  There are several other changes, better shown than told:

 #297:

 

#298:

That Hannah Means-Shannon is still noted as Managing Editor, almost a year after her resignation, is one thing.  Another is, Llexi Leon, who was apparently a party to that incident, who is not.  The Editorial staff seems pretty intact.  Lea White is back, last seen in #293.  There's a David Erwin and a Chris Chiang.  

And no Kevin Eastman.

I recall reading about Mr Eastman learning from someone else that he was no longer the publisher a while ago, but nothing more pops up since then:

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/kevin-eastman-no-longer-publisher-heavy-metal-magazine/ 

Frankly this smells of the kind of corporate executive pissing match I have so little respect for.  It's stained my perspective of what's going on in the mag.  Where is this all coming from, with the ancillary comics they're pumping out, and the announced shift to monthly issues, and where the hell is it going?  I'm too pessimistic, mostly my forlorn attitude.  Hope this shit doesn't fuck it up for the rest of us.  Trying to shake off my frowny face and stumble ahead.  Onward.

"I'm Sorry" by Alberto Rayo, Dary Huari, Isai Munake, Diego Revelo - 5 - Intrepid travelers, who don't need helmets for their space cycle, run low on fuel and stop at a planet to look for more.  They meet some creatively designed residents, whose arguing rends the fabric of space and time.  The travelers escape with their fuel, just in time to save themselves.  There's some creative arting and authoring going on here, but I found it too cluttered with pointless details and formulaic progression for my taste.

"Body Jack" by Alex Smith, James Firkins, Jame - 6 - Future-cop in a "meat grinder" city tenement where he grew up, is 'jacked' for a bust, where his body is occupied by that of a special operations officer, above his "pay grade", and witnesses the resulting carnage, unable to respond.  Raw-er art worked well for me, but there were no surprises.

"Philip K. Dick's Head is Missing" by Michael David Nelsen, Dwayne Harris, Frank Forte, Dale Carothers - 7 - "This story contains paraphrased passages from PKD's Exegesis".  I am mostly ignorant of Mr Dick's work, I did try to read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but it didn't register with me.  I enjoyed this story for its telling and its imagination.  I amused myself inferring knowledge from bits in the story, knowing that I was learning little, and I found some of the humor in it.  It was pretty wordy but I did fine with it.  I found the art and panel work nice, Mr Nelsen did the "past" parts and Mr Harris did the "present/future" parts.

"Sacred Geometry" by Michael E. Bennett - 6 - Subtitled " The Re-Education of Baron Edwin G. Krambiss", the Baron travels in his tortoise-mounted villa, accompanied by his robot drone assistant Baxter, seeking enlightenment.  Yet he fails to grasp what is offered.  A somewhat simplistic art style that I enjoyed, with similarly uncomplicated but descriptive writing, this one would have been ok in the mag 30 years ago.

Gallery with Carlos Huante - 7 - With a great interview by Hannah Means-Shannon, whose insightful questions elicit extensive answers from Mr Huante, on his career, techniques, influences.  Also with cool monsters.

"Bug House" by David Hine and Mark Stafford - 7 - Pest Management arrives at old Miss Wynde's house to address the infestation problem.  It takes a week of increasingly extreme extermination to complete the task, but the job gets done.  With a supplementary charge for "specialist disposal costs."  I mostly enjoyed the gleefully over-the-top escalation of the storytelling.

"A New Life" by Emilio Balcarce and Marcelo Pérez - 6 - An embattled space empire's ruler, in his immortal synthetic body, is nonetheless threatened by allied invaders.  Aided by his trusted wise friend and synthetic body provider, he attempts escape.  But, spoiler, the blast of his consciousness to a distant synthetic body goes awry, and his spirit travels across space and time, to lodge itself in the infant form of a more contemporary tyrant.  I thought this mostly looked good, and some enjoyable writing and storytelling was present, but I found the landing not stuck.

"Project Z" by Matthew Medney, Morgan Rosenblum, Voodoo Bownz, Jonny Handler, Vincenzo Riccardi, Verónica R. López - 6 - With a pile of "Creators" also noted:  Bassrush, Basscon, Herø Projects, & Project Z Festival Team.  Several post apocalyptic societies vie for control of a fusion energy source, The Triarc, amazingly discovering it, after almost a hundred years, almost simultaneously.  Similarly contrived storytelling and Mad-Max-Beyond-Thunderdome costuming have me less excited than I might wish about the To Be Continued...

"Incubator" by Matt Emmons - 6 - A robot in a wasteland, witnesses a craft crashing, and from hibernation pods inside, rescues, a baby?  And defends it from predators on its way to a subterranean hideout, complete with more hibernation pods?  Much as I did for Mr Emmons' earlier HM entry in #294, I like the art style and wordless storytelling, and I got some of the story out of it, but I got bogged down in confusion over details.  Not suspending disbelief enough I guess.

"Totemic" by FG Dr. Stain Ortiz Rivero, Omar Trucu Estévez, Felipe Sobreiro - 6 - A mercenary-looking couple, bring an apparently simpleminded captive, in their hopes he will lead them to their good fortune.  They encounter wealth, but of information rather than material.  The art does pretty well examining the effects of accessing this information, good and bad.  The story has some potential, but I got lost in the rote pontificating and typical comic pacing.

"Dowser" by Dwayne Harris - 7 - With Frank Forte getting an "Edited by" credit.  Wasteland thugs threaten a dowser's dog, unless he helps them find water.  He does, but it doesn't work out "well" for them.  This tells its predictable story well, and I liked the art style, detailed and descriptive, especially the goggles' reflections, even though they wouldn't really be a mirror.

"Tall Tales on Cyborg-9" by Frank Forte, Moramike, Dinei Ribeiro - 6 - Three slightly-humanoid pals take turns boasting of sexual conquests.  The art is ok with some nice bits, and the writing doesn't have much of a story to tell, but it has fun doing it.  The made-up names for various sex acts can be amusing, but I don't relate at all to that kind of braggadocio.  I recall back in a Mad Magazine in the 60s, reading the joke "the ones that talk about it the most, do it the least".

"Murky World" by Richard Corben - 8 - Our intrepid and woeful hero Tugat, continues his quest in pursuit of his horse and friend Frix.  In finding Frix, he also encounters amazons, a necromancer, and his deadlings.  With more delightful Corben mayhem, and compelling Corben art, this continues to be a bright spot in my recent HM fandom.  thanks

Gallery with Josan Gonzalez - 7 - Titled "In the Shadow of the Citadel:  The Sequential Narrative of Josan Gonzalez" and with an article/story description by Hannah Means-Shannon.  The story of a robot/machine dominated new world order, and how people immersing themselves in their own virtual depictions of the world enabled it, reminds me in part of Rod Kierkegaard Jr's "Obama Jones and the Logic Bomb" book (as noted on my Links page and sometimes available on Amazon etc, I like it a lot and recommend it highly).  The art has lots of descriptive and ancillary detail, the kind I like, that is both silly and cool, somewhat reminding me of some of Ben Michael Byrne's Kranburn and other work (also noted on this blog's Links page).  I enjoyed how the storytelling came together with the illustrations, apparently woven from interviews, and this could be a pretty cool book if they wanted it to be.

This issue ends with "A Special Preview of Ranx:  The Complete Collection", touted earlier as all the Ranxerox stories by Stefano Tamburini and Gaetano "Tanino" Liberatore from HM in 1983 and 1984, one of the highlight's of the mag's last years of monthly publication (if you liked the over-the-top senseless graphic novel violence and body horror and degrading sexuality, like I did), as well as some from elsewhere.  Advertised as shipping in June 2020, that didn't happen, though the HM Shop is saying it'll be in December.  This was something I thought I might actually get, if it ever materializes.

A couple things I liked, a few things I found mediocre, and a few ads for HM crap.  A lot has happened since this issue came out.  We'll see where things go.