Take a ride on the new Heavy Metal
By Dan Brown Heavy Metal is back. Like an undead corpse that refuses to stop lurching forward, the once-groundbreaking comic magazine has returned to newstands with a No.1 issue that relies heavily on nostalgia for the 1981 movie that carries the same name. If you’re a fan of the woman warrior Taarna, or sports cars entering the Earth’s atmosphere, or all-powerful evil green orbs, you’ll want to check it out. If not, you can safely give it a miss. I was never a regular reader of the mag, which – like Britain’s 2000 A.D. – was inspired by the French periodical Metal Hurlant and first appeared in 1977. But I think the team behind the debut edition is counting on readers already having warm feelings about Heavy Metal, the magazine and the movie. Editor-in-Chief Frank Forte says the new No. 1 represents a relaunch, not a reset, and calls the glossy, 232-page introductory issue “an unholy mix of legacy, lunacy, and visionary brilliance.” Shy about promoting this new version of Heavy Metal, Forte and his crew are not. I chose the variant with a Greg Hildebrandt cover – it shows an astronaut who has parked his car on the moon’s surface perusing a copy of Heavy Metal as Taarna and her winged mount float overhead. There are numerous other covers to choose from, including one that’s a Frank Frazetta painting. Heavy Metal No. 1 retains the anthology format of old, with several different stories in the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror vein. Forte himself has written a bunch of them. The best of the lot, according to no one but me, is Enki Bilal’s Bug, which imagines a near-future predicament for the nations of Earth: What if all the memory stored by all the world’s computers just . . . vanished? Bilal does a good job exploring the ramifications of this information blackout, for instance astronauts stationed in orbit suddenly find they have to steer their craft manually, which they’ve never done before. Meanwhile, people below are struggling to adjust to an analog lifestyle. I also enjoyed Cold Dead War, a sequel of sorts to the B-17 segment from the Heavy Metal animated motion picture, with one lone survivor traipsing through an island of undead airmen. The five-pager Evil Sex Bitch, meanwhile, seems aimed at adolescents, with its main soul-sucking character being the kind of female that the Eagles, Electric Light Orchestra and Cliff Richard warned teenage boys about in the 1970s. There’s also two Taarna stories, a prose section at the front of the book with assorted items of interest to sci-fi fans, a couple parody ads (no real ones), and of course the trademark offering Heavy Metal has always been known for: topless chicks. Back in the day, Heavy Metal was able to feature bare skin because, as a magazine, not a comic, it was exempt from the restrictions put in place by the industry censor, the Comics Code Authority. Like I said, as a young comic reader I caught only the occasional issue of Heavy Metal. I was a huge fan of the weird movie, though, so I found it odd this relaunch doesn’t make any mention of the film’s rock-and-roll soundtrack. For whatever reason or non-reason, I was a much more constant reader of Epic, the Marvel anthology series that was an experiment in creator-owned content. I guess I have more mainstream tastes, so if the House of Ideas wants to start that one up again, I’d be on board. You can bet, if the relaunched Heavy Metal takes off, it’s going to happen. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
