A solid start for a creative series
On my blog I've done a "Where I Read" post on this issue of Heavy Metal. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it's basically a blog post where you read through an issue and post your impressions. However, it's not necessarily a formal review. That's what this issue is.
Heavy Metal Magazine is a kind of magazine that was rare during its day, and is still rare now - a science-fiction fantasy comic anthology magazine. It's a rare niche. You don't get anthology comic magazines much anymore. Fantasy comics are extremely rare, unless they're using a moderately well known name like Conan, Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser, or Red Sonya. You don't get science fiction comics at all, unless they're written for a licensed property like Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, or Aliens (or maybe, maybe, The Terminator or Battlestar Galactica). This is the first installment of a series that fills both those niches, and with original characters as well.
This issue has several solid stories here, but probably one of the best is the first installment of Richard Corben's Den. Corben puts his take on John Carter of Mars and the Barsoom tales in a way that has a very distinct feel to it., not just in terms of its visual style (particularly with its full frontal male and female nudity), but also in terms of how it handles its amnesiac protagonist.
The next good ones are the first installments of "Conquering Armies" by Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Jean-Claude Gal and "The Adventures of Yrris" by Philippe Druillet and Dominique "Alexis" Vallet. Both are black and white swords-and-sorcery stories, but they also both couldn't be more different in terms of their stories. Druillet & Vallet's tale is more of a tale of high adventure like Conan and Fafhrd (and Owen Deathstalker). There is wit and humor there, as well as a dark and sinister side, which is also in keeping with the dread cults that Conan faced. On the other hand, Dionnet and Gal's story is much slower paced, though it has the same length. Its story of an army invading a city that holds a dark secret is an excellent tale that stays suspenseful without only a brief amount of violence. As far as the art goes, both comics have a very detail-heavy pen-and-ink style. Druillet & Vallet's look for their work keeps the Conan feel with Middle Eastern-style marketplaces.. Dionnet & Gal's story, on the other hand, looks more Central American. The design for the city here has a semi-Aztec/Maya/Inca feel to it, which makes it different from most other fantasy I've seen, and reminds me of the way I imagined M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel setting. Finally, we get the first installment of Mobius' "Arzach", which is part of a longer series of similar short stories.
It's not all wine and roses though. Jean-Claude Mézières' "Space Punks" starts off feeling like it will be a cynical take on the "Starship Troopers" story, but it never really becomes cynical, or does anything else for that matter. The first half of Norman Rubington and Akbar Del Piombo's "Age of Ages" collage story also doesn't do anything. There's no rhyme or reason to it, except for an attempt to do an edgy joke involving an acronym and a swear word, one that could probably be better executed by a middle school student. Chantal Montellier's "1996" tries to do cynical social commentary wrapped in dark comedy, and fails - and the fact that he tries to use thick accents for his characters to show how "uneducated" or otherwise "common" they are doesn't help (doing that just makes the writer look like a jackass). Finally, Roy's "Manipulation" can't make up it's mind about what it's trying to do. Is it doing dark comedy. Is it doing a variation of horror. Is it doing social commentary. Is it trying to do the same dark social commentary combined with dark comedy that "1996" is trying to do. Well, whatever it does, it's failing.
That said, we've got 4 really solid stories here, and about an equal number of flops. That's not bad for a first outing. Maybe. I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to hunt this down - unless you're looking for a complete collection of Heavy Metal. However, if you happen to stumble across this, pick it up. You may be glad you did.
