2 out of 5

Admittedly I only bought this as A1 guy Dave Elliot was going to be the issue’s guest editor.  So I’m not sure what I was hoping for.  A1 leans more toward a Vertigo anthology kinda feel, with a dash of Europe thrown in there.  Having not read Heavy Metal, I suppose I was expecting that mentality to be mashed up with the guns-blazin’ sci-fi / erotica that I imagined current HM to be.  Instead, I think we got a traditional Heavy Metal issue with several bits penned by Elliot.  So perhaps this was a good or bad or average Heavy Metal issue, I have no clue.  But I’m trying to rate it strictly based on whether or not the strips had any appeal, and unfortunately, most of them are too fractured to work, with the exception of the full-length Dravn story, but even it is lacking a bit of clarity that could’ve drummed up the experience a bit.

We have our front and endcaps that highlight Kevin Eastman projects – The Other Dead and Zombie War – which, I get it, its his magazine but it seems a tad shameless.  Z.War at least gives us some layouts as extras but the Other Dead is like a 5 page advertisement.  There’s a fairly interesting book review for ‘The Gladiator’ by Philip Wylie that only occasionally goes over the line into college essay slobbering, but it’s balanced enough to make me pick up a copy.  Then – awesome – there’s an 8th Day short, one of the titles from the current A1 incarnation.  …Which is a repeat of an already printed 8th Day short, which is not awesome.  Even if you justify this as a way to grab a new audience for A1, that audience will eventually be re-reading this story also… so its sorta a bum deal.  An amusing 2-page short from Alan Grant and a good spotlight on some Mark Nelson work, an overly serious alien possession tale by Elliot which would’ve fared better spaced out in A1 (but probably works appropriately for Heavy Metal), then Dravn, which lays out some kinda secret society vs. secret evil society in alternate steam punk history world.  It’s drawn competently and does a good job of covering two timelines in what seems to be a massive story pretty well, but whoever Elliot way over-abused narrative boxes for this and the colorist / letterer didn’t help by not effectively using color-coding to tell us who’s talking, or if they’re talking from a different timeline flashing back… or etc, or etc.  Thus it renders what’s currently going on in the story as jumbled and silly, and you just have to sorta consider the big picture instead.  A deviantART spot on some erotic fiction – drawings are interesting but the ‘analysis’ is pretty barebones and unconvincing – and a ‘Fenris’ story thats a prelude to something, I guess, but, again, like Dravn, is a bit too piecemeal to really get anything out of it.  Finally, a Sharky short which is fun but without context totally meaningless to new readers.  Thanks.

So if Elliot’s job as editor was to make a seamless Heavy Metal issue, I would say he only did okay.  I get the overall HM vibe I expect, but if I had no understanding of what the magazine was, I wouldn’t have been able to pitch it based off of this issue.  As just a standalone magazine, hardly any of the stories work to draw me in unless I know from whence they came.

Did not make me a HM convert, for which my wallet is thankful.