November 1982, and the latest issue of Heavy Metal magazine is out, with a front cover illustration by Alan Ayers and a back cover illustration by Clyde Caldwell.
The Dossier section features 'Rok' Critic Lou Stathis anxious to demonstrate how hip he is to the emerging street music scene from NYC, and in particular, 'The Message' by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Since the term 'rap' really isn't in use in 1982, all the hapless Stathis can do is remark on the '......stream of spoke-sung lyrics....' which apparently make 'The Message' :
".....the first black disco song for listening ?"
Ahh, how ill-prepared were those urban, white, Jewish, Rok critics as the phenomenon that would become rap began to intrude on their cultural consciousness.
Elsewhere in the Dossier, we have an interview with Michael Moorcock, reviews of works by Ian Watson and Peter Beagle, and reviews of new albums from the Cramps and X.
There are new chapters of Corben's 'Den II', Druillet's 'Yragael', another episode of Jones' and Wrightson's 'Freak Show', and the concluding chapter in 'The Voyage of Those Forgotten' by Christian and Bilal.
New in this issue are an episode of Findley's 'Tex Arcana', and William Michael Kaluta's 'Starstruck'.
As part of the promotional effort for the upcoming National Lampoon film 'Class Reunion', Wrightson contributes an eponymous short strip.
Since Leonard Mogel, the publisher and president of Heavy Metal, was also the owner - publisher of National Lampoon at the time, the use of the magazines to plug one another was not entirely a surprise.
Wrightson's 'Class Reunion' comic was in many ways better than the actual movie, which did poorly at the box office, an indication that the tremendous success of Animal House four years earlier could not sustain succeeding Lampoon productions.
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