Heavy Metal #318

My copy of Heavy Metal #318 came to me in late August 2022.  It has 176 pages and the $14.99USD cover price.  Almost three months after I got #317, making six issues I got this year.  Not good for a mag that pretends to be a monthly.  Another of the Portents that concern me about the future of Heavy Metal Magazine.  

I got the Cover A by Greg Hildebrandt:

It gets an 8 from me.  A lovely clothes-less lady with a dragon, it could hardly be a more classic example of Heavy Metal Magazine ethos, more evocative of a HM "brand" than anything the big shots are peddling these days.  And I thought including the classic tagline "The adult illustrated fantasy magazine" and the "June 2022" date was just adorable.

We are again spared the big shots' editorials, in favor of another "in memoriam" page, for George Pérez.  George Pérez was apparently a celebrated comic artist, who has not appeared in Heavy Metal Magazine.  Oh well.  RIP.

The Contents page has a notable entry "Heavy Metal logo enhancement by Peter Kleinman", which was a new and interesting way to put it.

There's a one-page preview of "A Darker God" by Homero Rios, C.F. Villa, Oscar Carreño, Jame, that says it's "coming next month".  Might be cool, I'll wait for it to actually appear before I try to rate it.

"3320" by Christopher Priest, Montos, Chris Sotomayor, Wille Schubert, Joseph Illidge - 3 - This appears to be a preview for the "Entropy" comic book HM is producing.  "In Stores July" it says.  Sure.  Boobs and occasionally pretty cool art can't possibly save this misguided supervillain comic.  I'll be pleased if I never see this again.

"Space Pirates Unit Dolores Chapter 2 The Orphans of Fort Messaoud" by by Didier Tarquin, Lyse Tarquin, Ivanka Hahnenberger, Jame, Fabrice Sapolsky - 5 - A 46-page installment of this sprawling space pirate adventure.  I'm suffering from trope overload on this one.  The protagonist is troubled by the mystery and brutality of the world she's entered, and suffers a murderous delusion, there's an orphan or something, and the alcoholic ex-ringfighter finds her a duplicate of his lost captain, and the enslaving religious colonizers are overcome by a rebellion of the enslaved.  And then the good guys are chased across space by more pirates.  I wanted to like this one, maybe there will be more installments that I enjoy better.

"Cold Dead War:  Ammunition" by Adam Lance Garcia, Armitano, Lee Loughridge, Saida Temofonte, Joseph Illidge - 5 - Another installment in this story with some different creators (and a couple of repeats) that tries to show zombies with some humanity.  I like Armitano's art here more than others, and it's an interesting premise (maybe) that these stories don't quite investigate in a way that entices me.  I enjoyed "The Rise" better, for different reasons, as a zombie tale.

"Starward:  Chapter Eleven" by Steve Orlando, Ivan Shavrin, Saida Temofonte - 6 - With Joseph Illidge credited as Editor, and a Special Thanks to Vita Ayala.  The story ends with this chapter turned up to 11.  The Sisters defeat Kaos in their father's body, reuniting for brief minutes, before he sacrifices himself to seal away Kaos forever.  The art works hard to the end, brightly action-filled, and thankfully avoiding unfortunate two-page spreads.  The story succeeds in scratching the surface of real human emotion.  This has been not terrible but not exciting to me.

"WireMonkeys" by Dan Schaffer, Fabrice Sapolski - 7 - Subtitled "2. Brainframe".  More freaky shit ensues when the protagonist Mazzy finds her lost lover "installed" in the cerebral servers, for her brain to be a "wet processor", finding along the way that her lover was not only hers.  So she breaks in to the servers, dying along the way and annoying the entities who reject her untimely death again, and thus reconstituted, she reunites her past lover's head with her lover's lover's head, so they can sensuously share data for eternity.  Pretty magnanimous if you ask me.  I enjoyed this one a bit more, for increased wackiness.

"The Axe - Part 4" by Joe Trohman, Brian Posehn, Scott Koblish, Diego Fichera, Lucas Gattoni, Morgan Rosenblum - 6 - The teens keep having to fight demons, hoping to somehow escape Sheol.  But one demon is an Earth geek, who wants to be besties, so they have an ally.  More delightfully imaginative demons, and many jokes, some even funny.

"Engagers - Part 3" by Matthew Medney, Bruce Edwards, John Roi Mercado, William Soares, Lucas Gattoni, Morgan Rosenblum - 5 - Noted as "The Final Chapter" in the contents, this 31 page installment makes use of the extra pages in this issue, to come to its end.  While this tries to end on a Matrix-y "Revolution" of clandestine resistance against the parasitic overlords of this reality, too many things soured my view.  The storytelling for one, there's some showing but a lot more telling going on.  The art for another; the coloring got better but it seemed out of place to me sometimes, and the drawing is good at first glance, but the uniformity of style is too manufactured for my taste; characters' similarities are too obvious, the hands are perfect enough to make me think they come from templates.  Maybe that's just how it's done in comic book land these days.

"Something Seems Off" by Chris Anderson - 8 - Delighted to see another installment, with the story actually developing continuity.  And dialogue!  A telepathic monologue from a meditating mind-melder, or something, but still.  And Darla seems to be a female humanoid?  With boobs?  Of course!  Quite pleased to see this story still shine through the dreck.  Can't wait for more.

Portents...

It has seemed that uncertainty is in the wind at HM.  I'm waiting to see if and when #318 will exist, if they can at least match the 10 issues produced in 2021, which I considered not too bad for the ambitious promise of a return to monthly publication.  I've gotten 5 in the seven months of 2022.  

They seemed to have pumped up their appearance at SDCC this year, from what I could see on their twtr and fbook (cuz that's about as close as I'll get to a convention), and they released a promo video for stuff being developed, that included some bits of a live action Taarna character, in an otherwise digital set.  The video link is in this article about HM at SDCC:

https://aiptcomics.com/2022/07/23/heavy-metal-metalverse-film-tv/

However, the comments on the video call out that the non-Taarna bits, promoting their other developments, are grabbed from other movies, which clueless me would not have noticed.  So that doesn't look good, using others' stuff to promote one's own properties, as if they don't really have much on their own stuff to show.

(also I can barely stomach the spewage in the press release in the article, buzzwords all over the place, and I'm already sick of "buckle the fuck up".)

A live-actor Taarna movie could be cool, maybe, and I'm somehow reassured that her costume is somewhat more sensible, or at least more practical, than Taarna's outfit in the 1981 movie.  A promo shot from fbook:

Snap from the video:

But it would probably be digitized over like most everything else.

I am also amused by the idea of a live-actor Taarna, in that a live actor was used for some of the animation work in the 1981 movie, per an article in the August 1981 issue:

That's about it for what I would look forward to, from the promo.  The other things (noted by the titles over the scenes from other movies) are for some of the new things they've been promoting, Adrienne James, Swamp God, Savage Circus, etc, which have not interested me.  Overall this promo video isn't encouraging.

Also recently, the HM website shows up as "Metal+" on the front, with tabs for various things digital, talking up "web3" and enefftees and crap, and also a tab for "Physical Goods".  That's mostly books and things along with the mag, and a merch section with nothing in it yet, but for the Hildebrandt calendars.  This attempted rebranding is likewise discouraging, shunting the magazine to the sidelines, and is reinforced by the article noted above, where blather is expended on it.  

And there's a really stupid typo referring to Taarna as the "Last Taarakin". 

Also again, right after the SDCC and its breathless announcements and panels, HM's fbook got hacked.  It would be amusing if it wasn't so dismaying.  Their operation seems to be teetering.  It's plagued by customers so furious about unfilled orders that I've heard rumors of a class action suit.  Their publishing schedule is inconsistent.  They went in with both feet on enefftees, and don't seem to be letting up stepping in it.  Their tumblr hasn't been updated in months.  I have small hope and smaller confidence that they'll be able to keep the magazine going.  Like I've said before, if they go all digital they'll lose me.  And I'm pretty sure they don't care.

While I have no sympathies for the Big Shots, whose machinations and hubris burden the operation with extraneous crap and have put it in this position, I'll feel a bit sorry for artists and creators, and the hapless staff trying to do their jobs, and fans of the mag like me (and not like me), who can only watch as Heavy Metal Magazine appears to crumble from the inside.  Will someone come in and save it again, like Kevin Eastman did 30 years ago?  Small hope is all I have.  Enjoy what you can, while you can kids, nothing lasts forever in this world.