> The film Heavy Metal is, I believe, based on the
glossy North American
> comic which itself was an Americanised version of
the French magazine
> Metal Hurlant. I can't say I'm at all familiar with
the content of
> either the American or the European version of the
magazine (fwiw, I
> haven't seem the film either) so I can't offer any
opinion on
> boiledness, hard or otherwise, but I always thought
of the title as
> primarily a vehicle for fantasy artwork: a glossy,
airbrushed feast of
> enormous breasts and bulging biceps.
>
Indeed this describes a lot of the material published in
Heavy Metal, particularly the covers (apparently they sold a
lot more copies when they featured naked barbarianesses)
there was a lot more variety than you would think, including
some stuff that could only be described as noir or hardboiled
& rather sophisticated stuff at that. I'm thinking
particularly of (& I hope I've got the names right, it's
been a long time since I've read any of this stuff & I
don't have any of it to hand) a French (?) artist, Loustal -
a friend of mine had a couple of English language editions of
his work - beautiful noir vignettes, using pastel colours, of
all things & it works beautifully.There is also the work
of Sampayao (spelling) & Munoz (?) who did/do these
stark,black & white hardboiled tales set in New York,
where I understand neither had ever been, at least at that
time.I think these guys are either Argentinian or
Spanish.None of this sort of material made it to the Heavy
Metal movie, which I recall as being rather boring &
dated. I don't recall anything of a h/b or noir element to
any part of the film. Rene
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