'Heavy Metal' magazine April 1982
The April 1982 issue of 'Heavy Metal' features a front cover by Jim Burns titled 'Zipper', and a back cover by Luis Rey titled 'Safari Between the Ears'.
This issue provides the latest installments of Corben's 'Den II', Segrelle's 'The Mercenary','Incal Light' by Jodorowsky and Moebius, 'Nova II' by Garcia, and 'At the Middle of Cymbiola' by Renard and Schuiten.
The Dossier is expanded to five pages and features reviews of 'Private Eyes', the latest album by Hall and Oates, as well as the Police's 'Ghost in the Machine' and the eponymous first-album release by the TomTom Club. These reviews come late after the release of these albums, reflecting the comparatively slow reaction time of print media back in the 80s.
Thing's aren't helped by an editorial decision to use a contrived 'New Wave' approach to formatting the layout in The Dossier section; the 'Heads or Tails' column is illegible.....
Overall, this is a mediocre issue. The serial comics are given only a few pages each, and the magazine is taken up with too many inflated essays.
In one essay, 'J. G. Ballard: Visionary of the Apocalypse', Toby Goldstein travels to England to speak with that author. Goldstein's writing has the pretentious quality of a grad student thesis:
With the arrival of the mid-sixties mental/physical/social/moral revolution, J. G. Ballard adjusted his milieu to pit so-called civilized invention against primeval ego needs. The personal apocalypse had begun.
In a lengthy Editorial, Brad Balfour informs us that he detests the term 'sci fi' because it gives the genre a puerile connotation, and negates the pathbreaking fiction produced by Disch, Dick, and Ballard.
Somehow Italo Calvino, and (inevitably) William Burroughs, are name-dropped in case some actual Literary Critics may be reading, and need to be persuaded that SF is Legitimate Art.
I've posted scans of one of the passable single-shot strips, 'The Moment' by Harry North.
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