Things

I have acquired some more Things, things with more or less connection to Heavy Metal Magazine, though all are at the margins.

First and foremost, I went and purchased a copy of "A Complete Concordance to the First Thirty Issues of Heavy Metal":

I first saw it on mycomicshop.com, though I didn't end up getting it there.  It was pricey enough for me to feel extravagant buying it, but my curiosity was piqued, so I convinced myself.  It has "Heavy Metal" in a hand-drawn logo in a future-ish font, it says "Compiled by Larry Stark", it's from 1979, and it looks every bit like a bunch of typewritten sheets photocopied (we called it a Xerox machine back then) and stapled together:

I think it's this Larry Stark, though I'm not 100% sure.  If so, Mr Stark has done much more with theater than with Heavy Metal Magazine.  Indeed, I found very little on the internet about this "Concordance", which appears to be a cross-referenced index of the magazine issues, stories, and creators (I guess it's a thing from the pre-searchable-database days).

It's mostly pretty dry, with just index entries, but there are some noted scattered through.  Many are clarifications, some are thanks, some are snark.  My favorite is where he invents a term "interweave" for a story told with words and pictures woven together on the pages, rather than straight text with illustrations or comics with word balloons.  I think it's a pretty appropriate term, though there are few examples in the mag's recent years that I can recall as I write.

The level of detail in the concordance and its notes is astonishing for me to consider.  This must have been a great deal of work, to page though mags, making lists and notes, and somehow typing it up in a sort of format.  I like that kind of thing, but even at my best I doubt I could have done this as well as Mr Stark did.  It looks pretty thorough, and pretty accurate, with a few typos, though I didn't check everything.  But I did see the references to one of my favorite stories, "Shattered Like a Glass Goblin" are all spelled "Shatter Like a Glass Goblin", which I found curious.  And since this only covers the first thirty issues, only through September 1979, I think I can understand why any hinted-at annual supplements haven't come to light.  Besides, Mr Stark seems to have worked much more on writing about theater over the years, generating a substantial legacy, so he had other priorities.  Still, I enjoyed this, in that it's a unique and rather obscure bit of very early HM history.  Indeed Mr Stark appears to be still around, so I would thank him for this small bit of his life's work.

Besides that, I came across a couple older Corben mags.  One is a Rip In Time #1, from a bookstore that closed when the owner passed, and years later had a clearance sale.  I found it for a buck in a box of comics, but didn't look much further.  When I went again for another try, the entire box was gone.  It's pretty cool, from 1986, with a nice story setup and other stuff, but it's short and black and white:

Even cooler is a DenSaga #4 from 1994 from a resale shop, not as cheap, but nicer and I enjoyed it more, as it added to the Den story that of course came to my attention first through my favorite Adult Illustrated Fantasy Magazine, way back 45 years ago.  Richard Corben is another foundational contributor to Heavy Metal Magazine, whose work extended far beyond the pages of my favorite mag, and spanned his entire long-but-too-short life.

Cool mag:

Horrifying story too.

Pretty neat Rip in Time ad on the back:

I also got a copy of The Rise #1, mostly because it was there and cheap.  I won't usually look out for these more recent HM books, and this is just a print of what was in #302 (21 pages of story plus 10 pages of ads), but it was one of the better recent stories in the mag, and it looked good on its nice slick paper.

Lastly, I found a Heavy Metal sweatshirt:

I guess they're called hoodies these days.  Pretty cool.  It looks pretty new, but I'm not completely sure it's not a knockoff.  There's just the logo, I didn't see any other mark or label besides the shirt tags, and the print is maybe slightly off-center, but it's hard to say.  HM is still selling shirts etc, but I didn't find anything that looks like it's this one, online or paging through magazines, back just past #300 at least.  I wouldn't buy a Heavy Metal shirt new, from HM or elsewhere, especially not during these interesting and uncertain times, but I've been looking through shirts at resale shops for a while, thinking I may come across one someday, and it actually happened, much faster than I'd imagined.  Pretty amusing, especially since it was at the same place I got the Nash the Slash CDs back when.  I'll wear it in public someday, but not in polite society, just when I'm ready to be asked about my favorite magazine by some random person.  (Narrator:  no one will ask.)

It's fun gathering things, enjoying the limited amounts of cool they they can provide to my Heavy Metal collection, considering connections and the passage of time, and enjoying the ability to gather them at this time late in my life in the future.  Next should be a review of the actually-real issue #320, stay tuned!