Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Heavy Metal #276



Hey Metal!

Yahoo! Love that crazy cover to HM 276! Such a break from the rather more conservative pallets of most covers, and its Jack Kirby like you’ve never seen him! I like these wraparounds! Is Gellar for real? It would be fantastic to see a Kirby world movie/theme park; I guess we are to be disappointed. God, if that ain’t a crowdfunding project, I don’t know what is! 

So, a great start, got me excited as soon as I opened the mailbox.  The rest of the issue does not disappoint.  First, bravo for the return of Paul Kirchner’s “The Bus”.  While I do not like to encourage reprints, I would love to see more! Are these new strips? And let’s hope this gets the “The Bus” book back in print.  Lost my first copy! 

I am enjoying the Aftermath stories, including this issues Big Clean, though they take a while to learn to decode, sort of like Paul Pope (who we have not seen in HM, hmmm) or Simon Bisley; the noise obscures the signal.  Like Bisley, Kevin Molen’s art works really well with the Chuck-Jones-gore-humor he and Matt are writing.  It seems that Aftermath is also taking a page form Aeon Flux, where the overall story is more like a framework for an extended scene, a vignette from that world.  The plot seems pointless or incomplete, which can be unsatisfying, but it is fun just to look at the wild exaggeration. Derp, derp.

“Narcopolis” has excellent draftsmanship, and the story, while low key, but I don’t care to know that I have to buy another book for this tale.  It would be nice if previews could be formatted to take up less page space so more could be devoted to works or chapters of continuing stories.

The prize of 276 has to go to Frezatto’s “To Much Fantasy on Mother Flower”. All the hallmarks of HM tradition appear: sexy character design, alternative storytelling, fantastic craftsmanship over varying styles and media.  Frezatto is like a sexy-Euro-Suydam (hmmmm, no Suydam in HM either) and this story was almost as much fun as you can have in a magazine.

Finally, thanks for numbering issues, and could you explain what is included in the numbering and where one might find a listing by these numbers with cover images? Does the numbering include specials? And, it would be great to be able to find a wider range of designs for HM tees, particularly cover images if the rights don’t make it too expensive.

PS. No magazine changes its production schedule like HM, so, see you in however long until the next issue comes!

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