Heavy Metal

Okay, guys? This is Archie Goodwin once again and Walt Simonson, and this is not a Marvel product, okay? [clears throat] This-- I, I saved up 'cause this thing was plenty expensive for a kid in 1979.

This is published by Heavy Metal, okay? "Alien: The Illustrated Story." It was four bucks.

Four bucks, okay? This is the graphic novel.

Now, there is an artist edition because Walt has all the art of this.

I think Claus Jansen may be involved in "Terminator 2." Don't quote me on that.

But, uh, the atmosphere, the illustrations, the renderings, uh, again, gr- again, not, not photorealistic, but we all know that's Sigourney Weaver.

Uh, mass market, Heavy Metal distribution.

Didn't see this on newsstands.

And this one ran from Program 10 to Program 17.

And in 2018, I almost said heavy metal, but, you know, similar vibe.

They call the programs progs.

How did that make you feel?

We now are at full-fledged war.

Things go from zero to bonkers very quickly.

And to illustrate just how bad the war between robots and humans gets to, we see the devastation that gets caused by the heavy metal kids, which are these hulking industrial robots who have joined forces with Call Me Kenneth.

And they are just straight up squishing people and they are immune to even the judge's firepower.

That was a big one.

Heavy metal, certainly for art.

Jean Giraud, Mobius, is like, I think probably just in terms of skill level, if not my favorite, one of my most favorite illustrators.

And then I would say after that, one of the most important things things, period.

This is the one with the red lettering, uh, that looks sort of felt tip pen drawn, and he's stood in front of the Interceptor holding the double-barrel shotgun, wearing a helmet and a pair of goggles.

And it looks drawn like something out of 2000 AD or Heavy Metal, which is really the reason-

Yeah

...

So we're talking superheroes and sci-fi comics.

You know, Heavy Metal Magazine, which somebody may have left somewhere and I'd find.

It was whatever I could grab, you know, get my hands on.

A lot of my fantasy language actually comes from novelizations of movies.

And now they kind of do these short vignettes and they're in different styles.

Because the Heavy Metal Magazine, and I've started getting a lot of their artwork on my feed when I was doing research for this and stuff on my Instagram feed.

I can't draw a stick figure.

Some of that artwork is incredible, dude.

Well, what-

This, this is worthy of Heavy Metal Magazine at its prime, you know?

Let's, let's, let's play it.

Well, thank you.

That's for sure.

It's mainly in the mid seventies when the magazine called Metalurland which became heavy metal magazine.

It's a comic book, very sci-fi.

And it came out in the mid seventies.

Peter Amill would be for his DIY vision of doing things.

It was his own way and his signature, his own label.

Terry Bozzio is like the discipline of playing such intricate stuff so precisely and so is definitely one of my inspirations and the other one would be Philippe Drouillet which is a comic book artist that was doing drawings for Heavy Metal Magazine and I copied him a lot and so I would say these three people has forged my artistic style but there are so many other people that um you know uh that forged my intellectual mind.

It's hard to express for me in a second language, but, you know, they are like the people who wrote books that really, really influenced me.

He was a comic book artist who worked at EC, Marvel, DC, and Creepy Magazine.

And for Heavy Metal, he created the character Orion.

I don't know if you guys know that.

No, I don't.

Is that, like, the brother of Darkseid or something? Do you guys-

I think in the DC world, maybe, but this is separate.

This was a, a, a character created f- that he wrote and, um, drew for Heavy Metal.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Yes.

So in 2014, the rights were acquired by Heavy Metal, specifically executives Jeff Krelitz and David Boxenbaum, to produce a feature-length animated film.

Which sounds awesome.

And their structural approach was incredibly encouraging for fans.

Please do.

Guillory specifically says in his post, the paperwork is done.

We just spent 20 minutes detailing how scripts were written for Showtime, how actors were fully recorded for heavy metal, and all of it evaporated anyway.

After 16 years of false starts, does the phrase the paperwork is done actually mean anything? Or is this just another cycle of the Hollywood machine revving its engine before it stalls out and dies again?