Heavy Metal 2026

I don't usually cover contemporary sci-fi and fantasy media, as there are a number of blogs and websites (like 'Bleeding Cool' and 'The Beat') that do this in a comprehensive manner. But every now and then I like to comment on contemporary stuff through the lens of an Old School fan of print media............ 

 

I've now acquired the first five issues of the 2025- 2026 reboot of Heavy Metal magazine. Issue one was available in April, 2025, and issue five just hit the store shelves. So HM is hitting a regular / quarterly publication schedule, something which never is assured with a reboot, particularly one that spawned as a Kickstarter enterprise (a 2022 effort to relaunch HM foundered after 7 issues, so it's a good sign that this latest effort is meeting schedule).

 

At $14.99, the 2026 edition of the magazine shows the advance of inflation since 1977, when HM debuted. But you get 232 pages for that $14.99, which is pretty good value. The magazine (as of yet) has no external advertising, which isn't all that surprising, since I can't think of many corporations nowadays that look upon print media as any sort of marketing venue.

 

Editor Frank Forte seems to grasp what made the initial 3-4 years of HM so engaging and is looking to recreate that sensibility. Gratifyingly, so far there's not much sign of crap like Matt Howarth 'Changes,' or Kierkegaard's 'Rock Opera,' or Stiles and Lupoff's 'Professor Thintwhistle,' which made me groan in the 1970s and 1980s.

A good example of Forte's philosophy is the publishing an English-language translation of a vintage comic by the Spanish artist Fernando Fernandez (1940 - 2010), 'The Callistan Menace,' in issue five. 

 

Rendered in graytone / wash and linework by Fernando Fernandez, with a translation by R. G. Llarena, this comic represents the great stuff that appeared 50 years ago in the pages of the Warren, Marvel, and Myron Fass / Countrywide magazines. 

Fernandez's artwork recalls the deft renderings of people, planets, and spaceships by artists like Esteban Maroto, Alfonso Font, and Paul Neary from long-ago titles like Eerie, Creepy, 1984, and Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction.   

Fernandez also adapted the Isaac Asimov short story, which first was published in 1940. While I'm often less than impressed with Asimov's stuff, 'Callistan' is a good Golden Age tale and one that is well-suited for a 12-page format. Fernandez is skilled at keeping the story from being too wordy, and yet, not too compressed.

It's rare to see this kind of care and craftsmanship in this modern age of comic art. I doubt many writers who work for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, and other publishers could do as good a job in plotting and composition as Fernandez. 'The Callistan Menace' fits in well with the other content of issue five and lends credence to the magazine's cover blurb, 'The World's Greatest Illustrated Magazine.'

Anyways, if you want detailed overviews of the contents of each issue of this reboot, then I direct you to 'Fred's HM Fan Blog' to get the full scoops. 

 

For my part, as an elderly aficionado of the glory days of HM, I'm keeping the rebooted franchise in my Pulls list and looking forward to issue six..........