Trolling through the wilderness of bittorrent, what did I happen upon but an 11.58 GB archive containing 168 issues of Heavy Metal magazine, beginning with its debut in September 1977 and extending (sporadically) thirty years to March 2007 (comprising about half the total run). The collection also includes 9 "related publications" (like the 1979 Alien comic adaptation) and 41 special editions. Heewack! A five-day download, but so what! (My computers had to do something while I was in the Berkshires for the long weekend.)
Anyway, it's Heavy Metal, starting right at the beginning with the stories that made it into the movie (including "Den" and "So Beautiful, So Dangerous") and going on to include tons of work by Moebius, Royo, Bisley, Corben, Frazetta, Bissette, Sienkiewicz, Vallejo, Darrow, etc. etc., not to mention fiction by Ellison, Bloch, Silverberg etc. etc. in between ads for turntables and rolling papers and Journey albums (and cassettes!) and illustrated features on upcoming movies like Blade Runner and Videodrome.
A treasure trove! It's all just amazing, amazing stuff. (Click on the vintage Luiz Royo cover above for a closer view of this fine example of what octopunk's and my friend Sam described as the Heavy Metal vibe: "Lots of machines, and sex, all the time.")
Here's "The Devil Burns a Sick Day", just one nearly-randomly-selected strip comic from a nearly-bottomless well of thirty years of geek brilliance.
(NOTE:As with all online-traded comics and magazines, these Heavy Metal issues are compiled into "industry-standard" .cbr and .cbz archive files. There are many freeware "comic book reader" programs available for Mac and Windows. "Pirate!")
5 comments:
When I was 9 or 10 years old, Eric Teacher, a jerk who lived in my neighborhood, stole a copy of Heavy Metal from his older brother because there were some topless pictures in it. I remember flipping through the strange magazine in a school yard with Eric. Although I have a notoriously bad memory, I remember that there was an article about Styx. Long story short, Eric's prick brother, Steve, found us in the school yard and he punched his brother and then quizzed me to see if I had seen any of the dirty content. Thinking quickly I mentioned that I had seen an article on Styx but nothing else. This seemed to satisfy the bully-in-the-making. I can honestly say that I have never looked through another issue since that day in the late 1970s. I remember seeing the cool movie but that's all I know about Heavy Metal. I think it's incredibly cool that you can download the entire run. I can't believe that with today's computers it still takes days to do so.
Inspired by this post I just Googled "Eric Teather" and I found the jerk, http://www.careercornerstone.org/images/chemeng/people/teather.jpg
It's too sporadic to be the entire run...more like half of it. (Which is pretty annoying, given how many "too be continued" stories there are.)
I've got a fast broadband connection, but this is a pretty rare bittorrent file (not that many seeds) so it can't come in very fast. And, 13 gigabytes is a lot at any speed.
I remember that kid. I don't think that's him.
My dad came home with a four-page promotional folio thingy for Heavy Metal shortly before it came out. On the cover were two female robots fighting to the death (one was clearly winning). Looking at the image several years later in a book of HM covers, I'm pretty sure it wasn't cover of the first issue but maybe the second or third. My father and I were enthusiastic, but we never really followed up. Probably he realized it was an adult content mag and let the issue fade. I wish I still had that promo thingy.
Many years later I remember reading an ish at the house of a kid named Bryce who was actually JPX's friend. It was this one weird day when he and I hung out. I recall a Moebius story in which the main character is having sex with a chick while he's on the phone, and the guy on the phone tells him the identity of the last remaining enemy shapeshifting alien agent, and "it's the girl." And suddenly his sex partner has become a glob of tentacled protoplasm and he has to pull her off. Anyway, the story had everything.
In addition to sci-fi with graphic sex and violence, HM was always that window into the vast, uncharted European sci-fi vibe. Of course I didn't figure out the European part until later, but it was always mysterious.
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