So, I finally picked up the relaunched Heavy Metal magazine, I felt compelled too, as this magazine was part of my youth.
This relaunch was powered by a Kickstarter, and was on the store shelves long before the book was in the hands of the Kickstarter backers. Which to my mind is a huge disrespect to the Backers, who have helped you fund a project, that in Heavy Metal’s case should have stayed dead.
Yep, those ending words of the above paragraph sum up my thoughts on this magazine, that really is throwback to the 80’s and suffers because it utterly fails to move on.
It just isn’t good, the storytelling is inconsistent, with one entire story that looks like it was drawn by tracing porn actresses and static dolls, and is utterly terrible. The lettering goes from really good, to distracting, to looking like it was put together using a free version of a comic book creator program.
I found nothing compelling about the magazine, while Heavy Metal was once consider a bastion of expressive illustration, this all felt a little boring, like it was all taking itself too seriously and forgot to have fun with itself.
The T&A was really off the charts, which reminded me, why back in the day Heavy Metal was considered more of an acceptable spank mag, if you couldn’t find your porn in the woods. You could after all say, I buy the magazine for the art, like buying Playboy for the articles.
That being said, there are some nice pieces in this book and a few of the stories were intriguing, and put together by storytellers who were doing their upmost to tell a story and not just hang a pair of boobs in every other panel.
There is an audience for this type of book, I don’t think there is enough of one to keep it going. The Kickstarter was powered by pure nostalgia and the legend of the Heavy Metal name, but I will happily be proved wrong. As it stands I don’t know if it will be a success, there is just nothing about it that makes me want to pick up the next Heavy Metal magazine.
Have I got to old for this type of book? I really don’t know the answer to that, it should have been a fun ride, not a slog to read. After all if Heavy Metal attends to cruise of nostalgia, then I should be the core audience for it. But… I just found it irritating and halfway through wished it was left in its crypt.
That is it, that is my Ted Talk.
Remember this is just my opinion and your mileage may vary.
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