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Heavy Metal. The now-shunned and hidden in the corner rag that gave me so much joy as a youngster.
Heavy Metal.
Within its pages were reams of 80s Lithograph Chicks, it's true, and Duran Duran must have got a lot of inspiration for their record covers from HM, but:
(and this is a big but)
I remember some beautiful stuff...Richard Corben's DEN, for example, which was a pisstake on Dune obviously...wonderfully drawn and written. There were also all those dirty Italian artists....the closest thing to erotica I got as a 12 yr old, otherwise it was just old Playboys and Hustlers...there were also those amazing strips by Drew Friedman that appeared semi regularly, I particularly remember the one where Tor Johnson wakes up from a nightmare to find that everyone in the world has the face of Ernest Borgnine...there was that great European art tradition going on...a wholly different sensibility in comics creation from the Americanized wham 'n bam of the Marvel/DC shite that was coming out at the time...if I could draw a broad analogy, HM was Dario Argento to DC/Marvel's Tobe Hooper.
And I mean...Guido Crepax? Rank Xerox?Milo Manara?Liberatore?
Granted they should have had nothing to do with the Hildebrandts, but...still...
Charles Burns? Interviews with Captain Beefheart and John Waters?Daniel Torres?
And I pick one up the other day and it's STILL got some good shit in it, namely Requiem by Mills/Ledroit.
HM gets a heard time because of its Creem-like roots, its American Jock/Grand Funk Railroad listenin'/boobie posters legacy...I say FUCK YEAH. HM was way ahead of its time. Then it kinda fell behind the times as artists influenced by HM overtook it. But a lot of the stuff around today, and stuff still coming out as we speak, has been done before. In HM's pages. The new stuff just has a more PC label.
I suppose at least HM always stuck by its guns in that regard. I mean, HM never apologized for its content or outlook. Not very fashionable to like it now though. Which, I think, is a shame. |
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