Heavy Metal #317

I got Heavy Metal #317 via mycomicshop.com in early June, and it's got 154 pages and the cover price is now $14.99 USD.  Photo of my copy:

The Cover "A" for this issue #317, is by Kim Jung Gi.  It has some imagery inside the HM logo again, it appears to be the same as used for issue #315; I'll call this cover a 6.  It is apparently the 4th in a series over the last four issues, that can be pieced together for a larger image.  I only got two of the series, choosing other covers for artist preference, and I won't look for the other two of the series.  Sorry to this artist, but I'm not about to seek out multiple copies of the same issue just for a cover variant.  This has some imagery inside the HM logo again, it appears to be the same as used for issue #315.

We are thankfully spared big shots' editorials again, in favor of another "in memoriam", for Neal Adams.  I'm not familiar with Mr Adams, apparently he was well-known and respected in comics, and he seemed to be in one piece in the magazine, in July 1979, "...Rears Its Ugly Green Head", with Michael Hinge, but he was also involved in some design work for the 1981 Heavy Metal movie for the "So Beautiful and So Dangerous" segment.

"Space Pirates Unit Dolores Chapter 1 The New Pioneers' Trail" by Didier Tarquin, Lyse Tarquin, Ivanka Hahnenberger, Jame, Fabrice Sapolsky - 7 - A young woman is sent away from the convent where she was raised upon turning 18, seeks her inheritance, and immediately is embroiled in a dirty underworld of a superurban megalopolis.  This 46 page long installment appears to be another somewhat recent French story brought to us via HM, not unlike "Jack Vance's Avenging Demon Princes - Part One:  The Star Prince" in issue #312, which unfortunately has not been seen again.  I like this sort of thing just fine, I like the art style and storytelling, and I hope they decide to continue both of these stories.

"The Adventures of Adrienne James - Chapter 4" by Matthew Medney, Bruce Edwards, Santa Fung, Lucas Gattoni, Morgan Rosenblum - 5 - Now they're space traveling and visiting a junk dealer.  No idea why.

"WireMonkeys" by Dan Schaffer, Fabrice Sapolski - 6 - With a "1. Homo Evolutis" subtitle.  This begins with the preview pages from HM #316, and proceeds with some freaky shit storytelling involving frenemies playing with mutations that enable self-regeneration.  Maybe this will go somewhere cool.

"Entropy" preview by Christopher Priest, Montos - 5 - Four pages of pretty cool black & white art make for a nice preview.  It ends with "Issue #1 in Stores July", so we may or may not see any more of this in the mag.

"The Future in Neon - A Conversation with Steve Aoki, Tom Bilyeu & Maciej Kuciara - Interview by Joshua Sky" - 4 - Apparently famous guy talks about his graphic novel and enefftees.  Right out of the gate comes "restaurant magnet", apparently different from a restaurant magnate.

"The Axe - Part 3" by Joe Trohman, Brian Posehn, Scott Koblish, Diego Fichera, Lucas Gattoni, Morgan Rosenblum - 6 - The three teens try to make their escape from imprisonment in Sheol.  Lots of action packed silliness (demon guitar goes "Gooosh!") helps make it fun.

"Dark Wing - Chapter Ten" by Matthew Medney, German Ponce, Andrew Dalhouse, DC Alonso, Saida Temofonte, Joseph Illidge, Bruce Edwards, Pete "Voodoo Bownz" Russo - 5 - The pilot, shirtless with an enormous - gun - confronts the madman hiding his "children", soon getting all blasty with the place.  This is apparently the story resolution, as scores are settled, accomplices are vaporized, some feelings are reconciled.  It ends with "To Be Concluded" so it's not done yet.

"Bioripple Preview" by Nir Levie - 5 - Some pretty cool art, but I can't tell if this is trying to tell a story, or if it's just some highlight panels.  But it says "A Bio-Punk Story " so maybe both?  This preview ends with "Graphic Novel Available in Stores and Digital Now!" so we may not even see more in the mag.

"Something Seems Off" by Chris Anderson - 8 - Happy to see another installment of this feature, first seen in HM #314.  So it appears Ricky and Darla are the main characters, and they attempt to infiltrate the body of a giant behemoth, so large he bears a city on his shoulders, to interrupt some ritual.  Again the wordless storytelling confounds my ability to briefly describe it.  Which I like, it's so imaginative and obscure, in the intriguing and thought-provoking way that I like.  And it ends with "To Be Concluded in the Next Bizarre Issue" so I've got more to look forward to.

I've been ignoring the ads in recent HMs, since they are mostly for other HM products that have only had brief previews, or none at all, in the mag, and the most I'm likely to get of any of that stuff is if I ever come across them in a resale shop someday.  I'm mostly interested in the magazine itself, and things that advertise "available in stores and digital now!" but only have previews, or don't appear in the magazine, are not enticing to me, especially since I'm not fond of much of what gets put up for previews these days.  An exception in this issue is an ad for a new Hildebrandt calendar with HM, that's supposed to come out in the fall, that I may keep an eye out for.

HR Giger Debbie Harry Chris Stein HM December 1981

I enjoyed seeing an article from Rolling Stone about that time when Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, and HR Giger got together, to make some art for Debbie Harry's debut solo album KooKoo, in 1981.  I wasn't a big fan of Debbie Harry or Blondie music at the time, though I thought it was mostly pretty good.  But I was a big Heavy Metal Magazine fan, and I liked the cover art from December 1981, with Chris Stein's photo of "Giger does Debbie":

(image from www.heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com/hmlist81

and an article inside the mag with more photos and text (photos of my copy):

 

There's some great imagery of the cool bodysuit and posing with other Giger props.

From the Rolling Stone article, it appears there's going to be a re-release of KooKoo, and Chris Stein is putting out a book this fall.  I may actually keep an eye open for it.

There are a couple more articles on this topic I saw, www.art-agenda.com/announcements/416517/chris-stein-h-r-giger-kokoo-1981 and www.kaleidoscope.media/shop/chris-stein-h-r-giger-kookoo-1981, selling more stuff.

 

Heavy Metal #316

I got the Cover B of Heavy Metal #316, from mycomicshop.com, in early May, ($13.99USD and 144 pages again) for the Bisley cover.  I wanted to see in print what a Bisley Taarna would look like, and I thought it was pretty cool.  It was Bisley all over it, from wicked face and body art and improbably inflated boobs, to the hoop earrings and dangling skulls hanging from Taarna's dragon-headed mount.  It gets an 8 from me.  Photo of my copy:

There's some of the cover image reproduced inside the logo, and this cover also has a "45th Anniversary Edition" plaque across the bottom.  The Cover A apparently does not.  There's an interview with Mr Bisley later in this issue.

The two big shots make up for the lost space of no editorials in issue #315, by taking two pages in this issue, each with a photo of them and unidentified someones, and pushing the Contents page to page 4.  That wouldn't be so bad, except they end up doubling the load of crap shoveled, though I'm doing a bit better about not getting too annoyed.  Mr Medney mentions things like "Web3" and "communities on the blockchain", and Mr Erwin again tries to craft connection with HM and comics and his own experiences, again unconvincingly, so I get a good eye-rolling workout.  But I learned something.  When Mr Medney referred to the Heavy Metal's first issue from April 1977 as "Heavy Metal #001", I thought "Whhyyyyy???", until I actually looked and saw that the very first issue says "Issue Number 1" along the spine.  (They referred to numbered issues til "Vol. 1 No. 6" was noted on September 1977.)  And it was edge-glued ("perfect" binding), which I did not recall after all these years:

I benefitted again from actually looking at the magazine, when Mr Medney said that HM influenced movies, including Mad Max, so I looked at July 1985, which has an interview with George Miller talking about "Beyond Thunderdome" as well as the two earlier movies.  No mention of Heavy Metal influence here (more of Mr Miller's experience as an emergency room doctor treating horrific injuries from car accidents on Australia's deadly roads).  With all the history contained in Heavy Metal Magazine's pages, I'd wish that the guys calling the shots were actually people who had actually read most of them.

"Cold Dead War:  Bloody Paradise" by David Erwin, Vassilis Gogtzilas, Lee Loughridge, Saida Temofonte, Joseph Illidge - 4 - American soldiers in the Second World War attacking Japanese positions, get unexpected undead help.  Several admirable attempts of the art and storytelling fail to lift this from the muck for me. Sorry, but seeing war on TV and in comics growing up, Combat! and Rat Patrol, and Sgt Rock etc. when WWII was as recent as 9/11/01 is to now, makes me want soldiers and guns that look like soldiers and guns, and I really think calling a bird a kingfisher as part of the story would entail drawing it to look like one.  That and the clear attempt to market the Nelson character from the 1981 HM movie, much like the efforts to market Taarna as one of the properties HM actually owns, overshadows the stark and murderous atmosphere the story seeks to portray.  Also weird that it's taken over a year to have another installment of this, since the only other one was in issue #300, which also had a completely different creative team.

"The Axe - Part 2" by Joe Trohman, Brian Posehn, Scott Koblish, Diego Fichera, Lucas Gattoni, Morgan Rosenblum - 6 - The teens' curiousity about The Axe dooms them to Sheol, Hell Off Earth.  Plenty of gruesome otherworldly mayhem to be had from the art, and there are some jokes I liked in the writing.  The evil critters introduced via trading card bios and the somewhat predictable story progression detracted from the parts I enjoyed.

"Taarna:  The Witness" by Helen Mullane, Montos, Saida Temofonte, Joseph Illidge - 6 - Taarna vanquishes an interstellar demon, somehow.  I wanted to like the black and white art, it's nice, and so rare in HM these days.  Unfortunately for me, I struggled with the storytelling.  It took me a while to figure out the counterclockwise sequential progression on the unfortunate two-page spread, and I got no idea of how or why any of the action was happening.  Sometimes I like needing to fill in the blanks of a story myself, but this wasn't one of those times.

Interview with Simon Bisley by Justin Mohlman - 8.5 - This broad and substantial interview with Mr Bisley is full of stuff I enjoyed, and has a nice discussion of his creation of the Cover B he did for this 45th Anniversary issue.  Which makes me glad I got the Cover B issue.  Not only is this art actually painted, but when asked about his vision for Heavy Metal Magazine in the future, Mr Bisley responds "... I see it will remain a magazine, for sure, for all eternity, paper and pulp without a doubt."  I hope he's right.  When he's asked about his first work in HM, he hesitates, not remembering, then gives Kevin Eastman a shout-out, which pleased me since I don't think he gets enough credit for HM's longevity, at least not by the current management, especially since he was apparently forced out a few years ago.  (Mr Bisley also says he thinks someone will correct him on what the first work was, so, I think it was January 1991, with Pat Mills with "Slaine:  The Horned God".  Which actually predates Mr Eastman's tenure at HM.  You're welcome.  And I think the most recent was the cover for November 2011.)  Besides that, I'll also take this opportunity to apologize to Mr Bisley, for the handful of times I haved mis-spelled his name as "Bisely" here on my puny blog.  And also to again point out that Eyebrow Tuna, a whacked out dubbing of a Japanese kids' cartoon by Mr Eastman and Mr Bisley, and Peter Jenkins, still exists.

"Starward:  Chapter Ten" by Steve Orlando, Ivan Shavrin, Saida Temofonte - 6 - With Joseph Illidge credited as Editor. The united Sisters battle Kaos.  Energetic art and big sound effects, and a dick joke, and an unsurprising surprise.  What next?

"Death Defied Part 2" by Joe Harris, Federico Pietrobon, Lee Loughridge, DC Hopkins, Fabrice Sapolsky - 6 - The reanimated entertainment mogul asserts control of his legacy, and is attacked by mysterious assassins.  Extensive flashbacks work on backstory, it seems there's a ways to go to bring the past and present of this story together.

"The Adventures of Adrienne James - Chapter 3" by Matthew Medney, Bruce Edwards, Santa Fung, Lucas Gattoni, Morgan Rosenblum - 5 - A trap door in a dark temple, an amulet unlocking mysterious mechanisms, riddles with an otherworldy oracle; it seems the mining of tropes will continue.

"Taarna -- The Last Taarakian" by Phillips, Zircher, Rosado, Barrionuevo - 4 - Noted as a "Special Preview" and credited with only last names (and not at all on the Contents page), this short preview has some colorful images but no story, and ends with an ad for the book: "Heavy Metal's Flagship Graphic Novel Available in Stores and Digital Now!"

"A Tale of Skulls" by Marko Sojanović, Boris Bakliža, Marko Serafimović - 6 - Stories of the Catacombs beneath Paris.  Pretty cool sepia-toned art.  This short story tries hard to set up its premise with some purported history, but it didn't succeed for me.  I had too many problems with the language, possibly translation issues, and I'm usually more tolerant, but this time the storytelling didn't come together because of it.  And it was "A Tale of Sculls" on the Contents page, my goodness.

"Preview:  WireMonkeys by Dan Schaffer, Fabrice Sapolski - 6 - Techno-future biker chick stops to help an old fuzz drone, and is late for her appointment.  The art does pretty well with the dreary tech-urban atmosphere, the story isn't saying much in its five pages, but it is just a preview.  We'll see if we get more.

"Engagers - Part 2" by Matthew Medney, Bruce Edwards, John Roi Mercado, William Soares, Lucas Gattoni, Morgan Rosenblum - 5 - The game creators continue to work on expanding their engagement.  This long 27 page installment finishes this issue.  The writing is reaching me better, it's working hard to fill in a detailed story, even though it's full of gamer-speak and marketing talk, which are things I have not engaged with.  At least this is another story in HM that starts with a preview and continues in the mag, as opposed to the previews that are selling separate books, that I will never see.