I was looking through some old mags, and the ad for "Interzone", a Heavy Metal graphic novel by Lou Stathis, caught my eye:
It occurred to me that I didn't recall ever seeing anything about an "Interzone" graphic novel actually existing. It wasn't on Lostboy's excellent heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com, and I didn't really find anything elsewhere when I searched the interwebs. So I looked through more mags and found a few things out. The first ad for Interzone was in the Winter 1989 issue, which also had a mention of it in the editorial by Julie Simmons-Lynch:
There were a couple more of the same ads in March 1989 and May 1989:
Then in July 1989, the same ad appears, but it says "The Venus Interface" instead of "Interzone":
And this July 1989 issue also has an entry titled "So You're Traveling to the Interzone" by Lou Stathis, Michael Uman, and Jim Fletcher. There's some pretty neat world building in it, parts amusing and parts interesting:
I liked the ads at the end, since we have inhalants in the future too.
But for the brief mention in the editorial, I saw nothing else about why the name for the graphic novel was changed.
The Venus Interface graphic novel came out around this time. There's a
"Retailer: Display Until August 15, 1989" note by the bar code on it:
Quite a different cover from the art in the magazine ads, but it's by Olivia so it's pretty good.
Besides that, there's an ad for The Venus Interface graphic novel in March 1990:
And in March 1991 there was "Welcome To The Interzone: Inkangaroous" by Lou Stathis and Dan Steffan, another story about the Interzone, that bears little resemblance to the story in July 1989 or the graphic novel (though it was kind of funny in its own right).
So I found out that the reason I didn't recall seeing "Interzone" is that the title was changed to "The Venus Interface", but I didn't find out why the title changed. It was fun to dig into this little topic anyway. But since I saw precious little on the internet about The Venus Interface, I thought I'd go into it here.
The story itself? I enjoyed it on reading it again. I had not seen this one until I got into collecting after 2005, since I had lost interest in the mag by 1989. And I'd only read it through before briefly, probably once I got it in the early haze of incoming mags when I started collecting them. So it was good for me to read it again more closely this time, since I saw a bit more.
It's an ambitious project, almost an anthology, with seven artists each doing a part of the story, presented as the protagonist Sheldon endures physical transformations at each step of the tale. The capacity for physical transformation is not only essential to this story, but is also a nice device to transition between artists. The story takes place in a future where the Interzone is one of those space station / planetoid amalgams filled with beings from across the galaxies (it's actually described in more detail in the "So You're Traveling to the Interzone" in the July 1989 issue, than in this story), and each transformation takes the protagonist to a different environment/reality. And while each section is quite different from the others, the story is told sequentially, and Sheldon gains understanding and perhaps some redemption, and it progresses to a neat conclusion.
The story has Sheldon contracting with some old wealthy guy to gather samples from individuals across the Interzone, but I'll just put up a handful of page photos showing some of the transitions:
Introducing the artists with images they did of Sheldon in character is clever and useful in following along.
The line "Heavy Metal's The Venus Interface is volume 5, number 4 in a series of special editions published four time a year by Heavy Metal Magazine" at the bottom of the masthead page is pretty silly. One could count this as the 6th HM special edition magazine, after The Best Of in 1982, Even Heavier Metal in 1983, Son Of in 1984, Bride Of in 1985, and The Best Of #2 in 1986, and the magazine volume number had already hit XIII by 1989 (like it's also silly that the hopefully forthcoming Whatnot Publishing editions of Heavy Metal Magazine will start with Volume 2 Number 1, since they already had one of those with May 1978). And there weren't any other Special Editions released in 1989. (Lostboy's heavymetalmagazinefanpage.com has a FAQ page that has a little bit about The Venus Interface and how it fits in as a special edition.)
Some cool stuff here. The art is overall good and sometimes very good, across a wide range of styles and techniques, and the different artists' styles add dynamism to a story with change at its core. The character Sheldon gains some new experiences in their transforming through the story, and the different perceptions described in the different realities/environments worked to enhance the character. Though the conclusion may have been a bit too neat, I did quite enjoy Lou Stathis's writing. It was consistent throughout, keeping character along with Sheldon's transformations, and sometimes referring to apparent changes in the art with the changes in locale. It did well to tie the story together through the different artist's sections.
There's even an amulet that the protagonist's character has, a little green triangle, usually worn as a necklace, that helps with identification in the different scenes. It's another neat storytelling device, and the amulet and the anthology aspect made me think of the Heavy Metal movie from 1981, with the Loc-Nar doing the travelling between stories. It's even green! But I thought The Venus Interface did a better job telling a coherent story with the different parts of the anthology than the Heavy Metal movie did.
So I found The Venus Interface enjoyable, and it fits into an interesting place in HM history, one of the earliest "special editions", as the mag changed to bimonthly publication from quarterly, and not long before it was purchased by Kevin Eastman. I enjoyed re-reading it, and putting this little post together, and I bet many other fans of Heavy Metal Magazine would enjoy The Venus Interface too. It appears readily available to those who would seek it out with the global communication and consuming technologies of our present future.
