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Heavy does it

Part 3

by Sean Glennon

The publication of Moebius's work is significant enough in that it freed artists like Pratt to follow their muse with confidence rather than feeling they had to bow to the mainstream comic publishers' dictates. That's not to say, however, that the mere existence of Heavy Metal allowed comic artists to make their livings without superheroes. Indeed, many of the artists whose work has appeared in HM have continued to work on superhero books to earn a living, dedicating themselves to their "true art" only when scheduling allows.

Pratt is one such artist, as is Rick Veitch, whose piece Three Dreams and a Coincidence will appear in the 20th-anniversary book. Veitch, whose mainstream comic work has included work on DC's Swamp Thing, takes care to point out that he's not at all ashamed of having drawn for superhero books.

"I don't mean to denigrate that work, because I love it and I do it," Veitch says. "There's just kind of a vacuum at the top of cartooning. There's a lot of people in America who have the craft of cartooning down, but they can't make it an art because it doesn't sell and they have to eat, they have to pay their mortgages. Heavy Metal is the closest most people come to seeing cartooning as art."

Veitch is a bit put off by the proportion of T&A-oriented work published by HM in recent years, though. He doesn't argue that there is no place for that work, but he is somewhat disheartened, mostly because it's not the kind of material that really made Heavy Metal great.

"The type of work that appeals to me is where you have mature creators making comics about what's going on inside their heads," Veitch says. "I'd like to see Heavy Metal do more of that, like they used to."

Overemphasis on T&A or not, Veitch recognizes that without HM, Americans might never get to see such groundbreaking works as Moebius's The Airtight Garage, a surrealist work that challenged conventions of serialization by presenting episodes linked only vaguely, and even then more by way of theme than coherent storyline. That kind of work recalls Heavy Metal's early years, the issues from which Veitch and his peers drew strength and inspiration.

"The Airtight Garage didn't make sense to a lot of people when it came out, but to me it had the impact of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring," Veitch recalls. That's quite a pronouncement. Stravinsky's 1913 ballet turned the classical music world upside down -- to the extent that riots broke out at its Paris premiere -- with its rhythmic complexity, full of changing meter, time signatures, and cross accents, artistic maneuvers that were unheard of at the time. (Here again, one is reminded of Ornette Coleman's pioneering free jazz, which angered traditionalists even as it delighted the avant-garde.)

If there is an equivalent in sequential art to Stravinsky, Coleman, or John Zorn it is Moebius, whose remarkable body of work has inspired nearly every forward-looking, forward-thinking artist in comicdom. And the fact remains that had it not been for Mogel and the chance he took with Heavy Metal back in 1977, Moebius and other trailblazers might have remained unknown to American audiences and artists.

Heavy Metal, then, can be viewed accurately as American comic-art's answer to New York's Knitting Factory (the hub of out-jazz), a singular and stellar outlet for real artistic expression and innovation in a medium dominated by mediocre sameness and unfairly relegated to second-class status. Twenty years into its publishing history, Heavy Metal is still breaking down barriers constructed as perverse tributes to the dictatorial Comics Code.

It's a battle the magazine seemingly can't help but win eventually. After all, it has those legions of scantily clad women warriors on its side. n

The gallery is open Tuesday through Thursday noon to 5 p.m., Friday noon to 8 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. Call (413) 586-8545.

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