Heavy Metal magazine, May 1983

'Heavy Metal' magazine, May 1983

May, 1983, is here, and I graduate from college. Much like today, the economic situation for new graduates is not very good. Many in the upstate New York area of Broome County are leaving, or have left, for the Sun Belt, where the economy is booming. In fact, in the next year of 1984, I, too, will depart for points South.

On heavy rotation on MTV is ‘Der Kommissar’, by the British band After the Fire. The band actually had recorded the song a year earlier, in the Summer of 1982, after original artist Falco had a big hit with the song in Germany at the start of that year.

After the Fire’s single went nowhere in the UK, and by the end of ’82 the band had split. Somewhat improbably, the single picked up airplay in the US, entering the Billboard Hot 100 list in February, 1983, and eventually making it all the way to No. 5 later that Spring.

The May issue of Heavy Metal is on the stands, and this month’s magazine features a front cover by Frank Riley, and a back cover by Rick Meyerowitz.

The Dossier section leads off with an interview with Canadian director David Cronenberg, at that time filming 'The Dead Zone'.

The ‘Future Tense’ section reviews sf books, including John Varley’s MIllenium, Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise, and Robert Thurston’s A Set of Wheels (stay tuned for a forthcoming review here at the PorPor Books Blog). 

Also getting coverage is the proto-cyberpunk novel Mindkiller by Spider Robinson.

The emerging genre of rap gets its own section in HM, the ‘Rap-up’ section. Releases by founding fathers Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang, and Afrika Bambaataa, are reviewed by Stuart Cohn. 

HM Editor Ted White can’t resist plugging jazz releases, even though he must have realized that the final nails in the Jazz coffin were being driven by the rappers being profiled elsewhere in the same Dossier.



 

The graphics / comics material in this issue includes ongoing installments of ‘The Ape’, ‘Zora’, ‘The City That Didn’t Exist’, and ‘Starstruck’. Among the better singleton pieces is ‘Space Crusader’ by Pepe Moreno, which I’ve posted below.