Heavy Metal #313

Heavy Metal #313 has the $13.99USD cover price and 144 pages again, from mycomicshop.com this time.  I got the Cover "A" by Ivan Smirnof, with a subtitle "The Adventures of Adrienne James".  I call it a 6.  Presumably Ms James is approaching something glowing green, Loc-Nar 2.0 perhaps:

And this story is not in this magazine.  It's not the only head scratching editorial choice either.  Indeed, the big shots in their usual insincere editorial efforts (with lines like "through your love of the brand" and "a promise we made to you, our loyal readers") talk about issues future and past, but not a word about this issue.  What is it with these guys?

The Contents page is notable for having both covers' art highlighted and credited, which is pretty helpful.  And also for Justin Mohlman's name spelled like that, instead of the weird switching of the "h" and "l" as it's been for so many months.  And Peter Kleinman is still getting credit for the logo, even though it's dim and obscured on this cover.

"Valhalla" by Brendan Columbus, Philip Silvera, Diego Yapur, DC Alonso, Saida Temofonte, Joseph Illidge - 4 - Warriors fight to the death at Valhalla to return to the living.  It has Diego Yapur and DC Alonso art, which I like in "The Rise", and the little bit of storytelling is succinct.  But as a two-page intro, this didn't show enough to interest me.

"Valentine" by David Arquette, Cliff Dorfman, Bernard Chang, Rob Jones, Fabrice Sapolsky - 6 - Valentine the prisoner becomes Valentine the Saint, who is then reborn ... into The Future!  This started for me as an interesting exploratory telling of the myth, but it appeared to be turning into another smoldering post-apocalyptic superhero tale by the end of the installment.  It says The End, so this may be all we ever see of this in the mag.

"Jack Vance's Avenging Demon Princes - Part Two:  Malagate the Woe" by Jo Morvan, Paolo Traisci, Fabio Marinacci, Ivanka Hahnenberger, JAME, Fabrice Sapolsky - 6 - Continuing from #312, in two parts of 31 and 23 pages, a still-significant part of the mag is given to this story.  The Protagonist Gersen seeks to rescue the damsel and defeat the evildoers in his continuing quest.  It does tell the story pretty well, but it's getting pretty incredible in what it's telling.  So many pefectly executed maneuvers, physical and intellectual, strain my ability to find believeability in the story. 

"Dark Wing - Chapter Eight" by Matthew Medney, German Ponce, Andrew Dalhouse, Saida Temofonte, Joseph Illidge, Bruce Edwards, Pete "Voodoo Bownz" Russo - 5 - There's pretty pictures of fighting and yelling and bared teeth, but the story is something something planet and something else Dark Wing.  Mostly yelled.

"Death Defied Part 1" by Joe Harris, Federico Pietrobon, Lee Loughridge, DC Hopkins, Fabrice Sapolsky - 6 - This starts with a "Special Preview" page, and this is a short 4 page entry.  A team of hazmat-suited technicians awaken a guy from a hibernation chamber, and we see the guy's perspective as waking from a dream.  Then he remembers.  This promising start ends with a "Death Defied Begins Next Month!" 

"The Rise - Part Six" by George C. Romero, Diego Yapur, DC Alonso, Saida Temofonte, Joseph Illidge - 6 - The scientist's gruesome experiments on prisoners escalate, with plenty of gory zombie killing shown.  The Diego Yapur and DC Alonso art, mostly black on white with some red for some color, works great for zombie killing.  This part ends with a flash (-back?) to a Vietcong POW camp, perhaps depicting an elite military rescue mission starting.  Which one would think will tie to the story, somehow.

"Digital Lure" by Isaac Escorza - 5 - A cybernetic interface messes up someone's dating life.  Mr Escorza seems to have done the cover "A" for HM #301, and there's also an Esau Escorza who's done some recent things in HM too.  Perhaps related?  The story's idea of people manipulating their perceived reality cybernetically is intriguing in some ways, and has been explored in Job Dun and in Rod Kierkegaard Jr's Obama Jones and the Logic Bomb, and surely many more things I don't know about.  But no so much in HM before that I recall.  This entry looks good, and does ok at the start telling the story wordlessly, but it doesn't maintain the narrative for me.  And the girl turning from *cute* to *dumpy* when things go haywire, with her top no longer baring her midriff, but the guy just loses his anime hair, was uncomfortably sexist.  Funny saying that about Heavy Metal Magazine, but it ain't the late 70s anymore kids.  Or even the 90s.

"Swamp God - Chapter 9" by Ron Marz, Armitano, Werner Sanchez, ALW Studios' Troy Peteri - 6 - And with Joseph Illidge getting an Editor credit.  The uncomfortable allies spring their trap on the Swamp God.  This suffers from another unfortunate page mixup, the story's 2nd and 3rd pages are swapped.  C'mon guys.

This issue finishes with the 2nd part of  "Jack Vance's Avenging Demon Princes - Part Two:  Malagate the Woe", which ends with a note of finality, after the damsel is rescued and the nemesis thwarted.  But there's another "To Be Continued..." so I guess there's more.