February, 1987. On MTV, Wang Chung's video for the song 'Let's Go', released as a single at the end of January, is in heavy rotation.
The Winter issue of Heavy Metal magazine is out, with a cover illustration by Greg Hildebrandt (the brothers, having discontinued working together, are now pursuing independent paths in commercial art; Greg has chosen pinup art).
In her Editorial, Julie Simmons-Lynch cites the Spanish magazine Cimoc as a new source of material. This may be a likely explanation for the abundance of entries in Heavy Metal from Daniel Torres, whose 'Saxxon' comic takes up most of the space in this issue.
I can't say I'm all that impressed by the Torres features, which come to dominate much of the content of Heavy Metal during the mid-80s.
Torres' decision to render his cartoony art in an Art Deco styling really doesn't measure up to the standards established in Heavy Metal in the 70s and early 80s. When you factor in the frequently inane plots of these Torres strips, it just furthers the sense that editor Simmons-Lynch has lost touch with the atmosphere of the magazine, and explains its decline at this point in its publishing history.
The jettisoning of the text columns from the magazine means there's only one short entry in this Winter '87, but it's worthwhile: an overview of the stars of Cyberpunk !
Complete with a portrait of these stars (although the painting unfortunately fails to indicate 'who's who'). Anyone who was unaware of the existence of the genre now had no excuse to remain ignorant - it had been referenced in Heavy Metal.
The comic employs some impressive pen-and-ink linework, along with the sort of morbid humor that characterized the magazine back in the 70s. I've posted it in its entirety below.
Thanks, again your post invites me to take out my copy and have a look.
ReplyDeleteI agree Sensations by Prado is the best entry in the issue. I kinda liked the Incongruent Stories #2, also by Prado (he was busy with 3 entries).
Normally I like Torres' Roco Vargas stories, though this one seemed overlong for one issue, with the entire story over 50 pages. It wasn't helped by the lesser quality paper, and some misalignments of line and color in my issue. The late 80s were lean years for the mag.
I was amused that in the cyberpunk article, a couple of the authors flatly rejected the label. Maybe not liking labels is cyberpunk.
thanks
Love this blog. Thank you for taking the time to post all of the wonderful finds you come across. Could you scan The Red Shirt from this issue at some point? I remember having this issue and was blown away that they illustrated a San Shepard short story. Thanks again.
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