Heavy Metal June 1979

Heavy Metal

June 1979

 

June, 1979, and in rotation on my local album-oriented rock (AOR) station WAAL, 'Dance Away,' from Roxy Music, is in rotation. It's a track from their 1979 LP Manifesto. In a year in which New Wave was dominating the early play lists, the Roxies, with their polish and romanticism, were something of an enigma, but they made really good music.

 

The June, 1979 issue of Heavy Metal magazine is on the newsstand. Angus McKie provides the front cover illustration: 'The Performer,' while for the back cover, we get a Betty Page tribute from Marcus Boas, titled 'What Happened to Betty.'

 

For the masthead, editors Sean Kelly and Valerie Marchant let us know, in their inevitably deadpan, too-hip-too-care way, what is going on in this latest issue.

 

Looking through this issue from perspective of 46 (!) years, I'm struck by how impactful it was to see comic art rendered in process color. Although Heavy Metal had been on the stands for over two years now, it was striking to see the color schemes displayed on the pages of a 'slick' magazine devoted to sci-fi and fantasy comics and graphics.

 

Look at the colors for the second installment of 'Alien: The Illustrated Story,' and the penultimate episode of Corben's 'New Tales of the Arabian Nights':

 

In 1979, this kind of reproduction was commonplace in the albums sold in Western Europe, but novel and exciting for comics published in the USA.

 

For an excerpt for the novel 'East Wind Coming,' by Arthur Byron Cover, the HM editors feature a full-page illustration by Bernie Wrightson. Had it been done in the CMYK 'spot color' print scheme then still in widespread use in comics, it would not have had the visual impact that it does when rendered in process color.

 

The major piece in the June issue is the complete saga of 'Captain Future,' by Serge Clerc, which first appeared in Metal Hurlant in 1978. Its deep blacks and finer lines are admirably displayed in the pages of HM, showing that it wasn't just color artwork that benefited from the 'slick' magazine printing process.

 

Captain Future is filled with little allusions to pop culture; one character, 'Stiv Budder,' the captain of a fleet of space pirates, is modeled on Steven John Bator, aka 'Stiv Bator,' lead singer for the Cleveland punk band the Dead Boys. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rolling Stone, May 4, 1978

 

 

Then we have two quintessential 'stoner' comics, from those early days of HM. 

 

First, there's ............'Pyloon,' by Ray Rue  and Leo Giroux, Jr. Several episodes appeared in the late seventies, all featuring cribbed artwork, brilliant colors, and deranged narratives. Deranged, that is, if you weren't stoned. If you were stoned, then it all made perfect sense.

 

And of course, we must have a look at the latest installment of McKie's 'So Beautiful and So Dangerous,' another comic that mandated process color reproduction, and the assistance of Cannabis sativa, to understand.

 

The June, 1979 issue of Heavy Metal is another of the better ones. Worth picking up if you can find it for $10 or less on the shelves of a used bookstore or antiques mall.

Heavy Metal May 1979

Heavy Metal

May, 1979

 

May, 1979, and atop the Billboard Hot 200 chart for albums sits the Doobie Brothers with Minute by Minute. Fast rising, and soon to take over the top slot, is Supertramp's Breakfast in America. Also in the top five is Spirits Having Flown by the Bee Gees; little did anyone know that it would be the last time a Bee Gees LP ever would top the charts.........

I have gone to Gordon's Cigar Store with my hard-earned cash and picked up the May issue of Heavy Metal magazine. This is a good issue. The front cover, 'The Wizard of Anharitte,' is by UK artist Peter Jones, and the back cover, a glowing fantasy by Clyde Caldwell, titled 'Centaur's Idol.'

 

Lots of quirky material inside, material best taken in with the accompaniment of herbal substances.

While Moebius continues to contribute 'Airtight Garage,' frustratingly, Sean Kelly and Julie Simmons insist on parceling it out in very brief (i.e., two- and three-page) installments. 

Also presented in an installment is part 4 of the novel 'Starcrown,' by John Pocsik. While it got a nice treatment from artists like Gil Kane, 'Starcrown' never advanced beyond a limited serialization in Heavy Metal.

 

Perhaps the major feature in this May issue is the first installment of a serialization of the opening chapter (i.e., 16 pages) of the graphic novel accompanying the upcoming film Alien. The graphic novel, by Walt Simonson, was the first such publication ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list for paperbacks.

Also noteworthy were some original pieces, such as 'Night Angel,' by Paul Abrams, the continuation of the 'New Tales of the Arabian Nights,' by Richard Corben, and a retro-style adventure, starring a comely female: '8 Bells; Amora,' by Grey Morrow. All good stuff !

 

 

 

The late Al Sarrantonio contributes 'Roger in the Womb,' a three-page story about a most unusual fetus. It's humorous, but also with a rather offbeat, disconcerting note at the ending. 

One of the more interesting pieces in this May issue is a black-and-white comic by Ben Katchor, titled 'A Proposed Architect.' Katchor, who would go on to produce comics and graphic novels featuring a Jewish urbanite named Julius Knipl, focuses on cityscapes and their buildings. In 'Architect,' there are no tits and no ass (rather unusual for Heavy Metal). Still, it succeeds as a memorable excursion into the surreal.

 

 

 

 

Book Review: Prison Ship (M. Caidin)

Book Review: 'Prison Ship' by Martin Caidin

3 / 5 Stars

 

Martin Caidin (1927 – 1997) was a prolific author of nonfiction books (mainly about military aviation) and fiction (mainly SF, thrillers, and aviation-related topics). Growing up in the 60s and 70s I read several of his military history books, as well as his novel ‘Cyborg’, which became the basis for the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. Caidin’s fiction was serviceable, if not considered by the sci-fi literati to be noteworthy (he never was invited to contribute to the major anthologies of the 60s and 70s). But his books sold well enough for him to release them on a continuous basis from the late 50s to the mid 90s. 

‘Prison Ship’ (596 pp.) is a thick chunk of a paperback, and features cover art by David Mattingly. It was published by Tor Books in April 1989. 

 

This novel is a very clear effort by Caidin to be provocative, to shock bourgeoisie sensibilities, to offend blacks, Hispanics, Moslems, Hindus, and most of all, people who liked their aliens lovable and cuddly, like ‘E.T.’ and the Ewoks. 

 

It’s difficult to see what Caidin hoped to gain career-wise by assembling a 596-page SF ‘splatterpunk’ novel, other than the ability to direct an upraised literary middle finger to the SF publishing community. Or perhaps he simply wanted to show just how ‘macho’ a writer he could be.

‘Prison Ship’ features three main characters; two human, and one alien. The main human character is Jake Marden, a sort of secular Jewish version of Doc Savage, but with a fondness for committing crimes, not deterring them. The other character is a Bad Azz Mofo black man named Jube Bailey. Jake and Jube meet up in Old Millford Prison, a state penitentiary located in Florida. Jake and Jube, by virtue of their physical size, ferociousness, and intelligence, take command of the prison and turn it into their own unique criminal enterprise.

The third character is an alien named Arbok; once a hotshot interstellar pilot, Arbok has been convicted of murder and is sentenced, along with five other aliens, to certain death as a slave laborer on a prison planet in a galaxy far, far away. Arbok leads an insurrection aboard the Frarsk, the prison ship of the book’s title, and commandeers the vessel to a distant galaxy and one of its few habitable planets: Earth.

Arbok and Jake establish a quasi-telepathic link and soon the Frarsk touches down on the grounds of Old Millford. What happens when six homicidal aliens team up with a small army of homicidal earthmen ? Nothing good, that’s clear. There will be VERY little singing of ‘Kumbaya’ around the fire and heartfelt messages about Peace, Love, and Multicultural Understanding. There WILL be plenty of violence and atrocities.

As an action novel, ‘Prison Ship’ starts off with plenty of velocity; the first 38 pages contain more mayhem and intrigue than entire novels by other thriller writers. But after that, the book begins to lose steam. It’s too long by at least 200 pages (if not more) and suffers from uneven pacing, too many filler passages, utterly contrived plotting, and pulp-worthy dialogue. I finished the book wondering if the Baen editor assigned to handle it actually did anything more than simply sign off on the publishing contract.

‘Prison Ship’’s splatterpunk content is liberal. These semi-pornographic passages are offset by star / asterisk symbols so that squeamish readers can skip them. In my mind these passages could have been deleted without harming the novel all that much. But again, Caidin seems to have been adamant about being Transgressive, so the splatterpunk stuff crops up at regular intervals. 

 

One section towards the book’s end, supposedly representing a ‘shock’ revelation about the aliens, is so contrived, and so clumsily enthusiastic about piling on the gore, that it’s hard to come away from ‘Prison Ship’ with any attitude other than one that recognizes that Caidin knew he was putting out some major schlock. 

If you’re a fan of splatterpunk, and you can tolerate a meandering, plodding narrative if it delivers plenty of sarcastic, gruesome humor, then ‘Prison Ship’ will be your cup of tea. 

 

If you’re expecting a carefully crafted novel that uses SF tropes and graphic violence to say something unpleasant (but true) about the Human Condition (like Norman Spinrad does in ‘The Men in the Jungle’), I don’t think 'Prison Ship' will appeal to you. 

Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows

Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows

by Jean-Claude Mezieres (art) and Pierre Cristin (story)

Dargaurd, 1981

'Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows' (48 pp.) first was issued in 1975 as a serial in the French magazine Pilote, then later, an album des bande dessinee (Franco-Belgian comic book). 

It's one of a number of Valerian albums des bande dessinees that were translated into English and published in the United States by Dargaud during the early 1980s; 'Ambassador' was issued in 1981. That same year, it was serialized in Heavy Metal magazine.

Some of the contents of 'Ambassador' were incorporated into the 2017 feature film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

The Dargaud editions measure 8 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches, which corresponds to the dimensions of the traditional bande dessinee. It's nice to see the artwork in the format in which it originally was published.

As 'Ambassador' opens, our heroes Valerian and Laureline are tasked with escorting the Galaxity ambassador to an important diplomatic conference on the massive artificial planet of Central Point.

Central Point, which has been in existence for hundreds of years, is home to envoys from all the civilized races of the galaxy; these are accommodated in neighborhoods custom-tailored for the physiologies of their inhabitants.

This being a French comic, the ambassador likely is a satirical depiction of an actual French politician from the mid-70s, but I confess to not knowing exactly who that French politician is..........

Soon after their arrival on Central Point, a group of assailants ambush the team and abduct the ambassador and Valerian. It is up to the resolute Laureline, accompanied by a reluctant Colonel Diol, a 'protocol officer' of cowardly bent.

The search for the ambassador and Valerian will takes Laureline all over Central Point, and involve encounters with all manner of strange alien races.

'Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows' is another good episode in the Valerian Canon. The action is well-plotted by Cristin, who takes advantage of the sprawling nature of Central Point to introduce the characters into a new milieu every other page or so. This being a comic intended for a juvenile audience, there is no explicit violence or risque content, but there certainly is some satiric humor that will be understood on a 'adult' level.

As with other Valerian titles, there is a political subtext to Cristin's story, namely, Galaxity (a stand-in for Earth) is a less than noble entity, and the ambassador's mission has an underlying motive that belies Galaxity's outward appearance of cooperativity and mutual respect. 

Mezieres' artwork is very good, and the color schemes are arguably more advanced as compared to those appearing in the American comic books of the 1970s and 1980s.

If you're interested in getting a copy of 'Ambassador of the Shadows', copies of the Dargaud edition remain available for prices under $20. Also available is a smaller-dimension English version, released by UK's Cinebook in 2013. And, as the sixth book in the Valerian series, 'Ambasador of the Shadows' currently is included in Cinebook's 'Valerian: The Complete Collection' hardbound edition, Volume 3 (2017).

Questar magazine October 1980

Questar magazine

October, 1980

Questar was a short-lived science fiction magazine that ran for 13 issues, from Spring 1978 to October 1981. It began life as a semiprofessional zine, then briefly flourished in 1980, when it received national distribution. One problem the magazine experienced was its irregular publishing schedule, which meant it was months behind other genre magazines (like Starlog) in covering prominent films. This is apparent in the October, 1980 issue, where films like The Empire Strikes Back are being reviewed some three months after release. This was a disadvantage in terms of maintaining circulation. 

 

According to the entry for the magazine at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction website, in 1981, Undercapitalized and undersold, Questar sank: lamented by a few, unnoticed by many. 

Over the years I've collected six or seven issues, and the October, 1980 issue is one of the best. It features a striking Frazetta painting on the cover. The advertising, while rather limited, directs readers to vinyl LPs of soundtracks to lower-budget horror films:

There's an ad for the Roger Corman film Battle Beyond the Stars, a reasonably engaging Star Wars ripoff. And Marvel promotes its new magazine Epic Illustrated.
 

Looking through the movie reviews in the back pages reveals some strange and long-forgotten enterprises. Such as Cheech and Chong's Next Movie, a 1980 followup to Up in Smoke. During the course of Next Movie our stoner duo wind up inside a UFO, hence the sci-fi connection. Stretching things a bit, Questar lumps the disco musical Xanadu in with Cheech and Chong, something of an awkward juxtaposition.

Also reviewed are two low-low-budget sci-fi films. One, Scared to Death, was an Alien copy. You can watch the film here. Showing that no scrap of pop culture ever is lost to perpetuity, in 2022 a novelization of the film was published under the auspices of the 'Encyclopocalypse Movie Tie-In' series.

 

Alien on Earth, aka Alien Contamination, was a drive-in obscurity from 1980. Another Alien ripoff, this time from an Italian film studio, Alien Contamination since has earned a place in the demented hearts of trash film fans. It can be viewed here.

The book review pages deal with some novels and short story collections from Pohl, Wolfe, Niven, and Vance. I wouldn't consider any of the profiled works to be gems of early 80s sci-fi.

One thing about the October issue is it has outstanding illustrations, such as this one for the short story 'Youth in Asia' ('euthanasia'.....get it ?). 

The main feature in this October issue is a tribute to the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. It leads off with a powerful illustration whose artist is, sadly, un-named. The article provide capsule reminiscences of the cast and crew, looking back at their work from twelve years previously.

 

This October issue of Questar is sufficiently interesting that if you see it on the shelves of a secondhand bookshop, or an antiques store, it's worth paying a little extra for it, in order to have your own copy. Eighties nostalgia, for sure......