Grant Morrison's Heavy Metal Sex Scene

Let's talk about sex, bunny

The most striking thing in Grant Morrison's first issue of Heavy Metal was the lack of sex, and it was a pleasant surprise. For years, HM greeted comic book readers with covers featuring women covered with slim to nothing. Frank Frazetta paintings of Rubenesque women would be used on some of EC Comics's most famous covers, but they would be used as the template for HM covers and even be used for the November 1990 issue. Beyond the covers, the pages within would all but shy away from sex. While super hero comics were largely male fantasies, it makes sense that the fantasies in HM, “The adult fantasy magazine,” would have a post-pubescent take on the subject and grace covers with seductive images used to draw readers in.

This publishing freedom would allow HM to introduce North American readers to great European artists like Milo Manara and Guido Crepax. Sometimes, the stories toe the line between erotica and illustrated pornography. But that's just part of the artistic statement, right? Not always for the visual thrill, this same editorial indulgence would publish Moebius's use of sex as comedy as easily as his use of sex as stimulation.

In his second issue as Editor-In-Chief, Grant Morrison more than compensates for the lack of tantalizing pages in his first Heavy Metal with issue #281, the Sex Special. The cover sets up the issue with the depiction of an anthropomorphic female rabbit dressed in lite S&M gear centered under the logo. While the cover is cute by today's standards, the inside cover gets a little graphic with Philippe Caza's image of Hathor. Naked, with legs spread, the Egyptian goddess sits in a desert oasis which is being birthed from her, like a waterfall. Knowing Hathor was associated with fertility, joy and motherhood would make it clearer the image is less interested in the naked woman with a cow head as a sex object, and more focused on the symbolism of myth and nature, even if the sexual nature of the image is unavoidable.

Making readers wonder if they're looking at art for smut's sake or smut for art's sake is something HM is known for, and Caza's 1983 “Hathor” is a great way for Morrison to echo the vibes of HM past. In his introduction, Morrison writes “The THROBING, demented hyperzine you now hold in your hands, has been VIGOROUSLY PUMPED so fit to burst with SEX that to include even a single iota of extra SEX here in this editorial would push us over internationally-agreed limits for this sort of thing and contravene the SEX in Sci-Fic Act of 1896 [...]” While his introductions are written with comedy and energy, the sentiment of this issue being stuffed with sex falls flat, by about one third. Roughly 40 of the pages in #281 are given to stories being continued from previous issues. These stories have nothing to do with the topic and undermine the value of #281 as a special. Rewinding the clock to October 1980 issue, HM is seen devoting it's pages to stories about rock music. This left stories from the the September issue to continue in November, making fans of Pierre Christian and Enki Bilal wait an extra month for their next installment of “Progress.”

Why Bilal's “Julia & Roem,” and the other four stories carried or carrying over, can't wait till September this time around is an odd editorial choice that ultimately hinders an otherwise well put together special. “Option 3,” shows that Morrison is on a comedic roll. Mixing sex and jokes together in the fashion he used in The Filth, Morrison brings a group of misfits together to save the day. Simeon Aston's art moves the script with thoughtful design. Focused on the page as an object, Aston turns each one into a fluid space that works with individual panels and overlapping images. Some pages are simple and feel crisp because of how uncrowded they are, but with pages that introduce audiences to aliens, rooms filled with floating brains and space ships, there's never a lack of detail. Aston's balance and timing make the cheesy, sex-based comedy fun to read. The articulate expressions compliment the joys and pains of a group flying through space on a mission that is not so much “make love, not war” as it is “make love, as war.” The story “Space Jizz” continue the idea of sex as joke when Ed Luce's familiar style finds out what happens when a space traveler gets infected with, you guessed, space jizz.” With a simple plot and goofy jokes, the story rides the bigger joke of cartoony drawings doing adult thing.

Black and white, with a green hue, the simple design of “Luv U” works with the four page short. With 12 panels, Edgar Roggenbau and Patricio Delpeche work with two camera-angels in a single room to play with the idea of cybernetic love. Very little changes from panel to panel. What does change functions as hints for a reader to guess at the plot twist ahead. It moves fast but takes no unnecessary time to get to an ending where comedy flirts with what's creepy.

“The Last Romantic Antihero” is the first contribution from Dean Haspiel. First published in Keyhole, The story doesn't focus on sex at all. Instead, it follows Billy Dogma looking for “the new love” in a world plagued by an “epidemic of global narcissism where apathy and indifference held sway.” Much better is “One Such Partner,” written by Stoya and adapted by Haspiel. Describing a scene from the writer's past, the story tells the well written memory of a youthful sexual encounter with fondness. Haspiel turns her prose into captions and turns the characters into humanoid aliens driving through space. Some panels are moments from the story, but the rest are imagined and add an extra layer to a sex story about sentimentality.

The featured painting from the Corey Helford Gallery certainly belong in this special issue. With seductive and playful nudity paired with images of women in coquettish poses, the gallery focuses on Ray Ceaser but includes others and offers and entry from well known Ron English. The interview with Matthew Bone also opens up exposure to paintings with sexual themes. Each featured work of the artist either has a focus on a nude model or pair of parted lips, often eating flowers.

Possibly the best entry in this special is Jamaica Dyer's “Her First Time.” Without any dialogue, this story uses captions and water colors to introduces two women destined to be lovers. Dyers begins with a spaceship traveling through space and the narration, “She hears the call from across the stars.” The last panel on that page has the ship docking into an opening bay with the caption, “This is it… her first time.” That first page shows how symbolism will play a role in this story of sex and space. With finger painting and space-age strap-ons, sex is shown as the creation of passion, ritual, life and destruction. In what's set up as a role in the characters destiny, the two work through a sexual awakening that evolves into something much bigger than the two of them while pages filled with nudity always seem to stay on the side of the erotic and away from the pornographic.

Even though there is a nice amount of good in Heavy Metal #281, it's not very satisfying. Between the 40 pages given to recurring stories, and the Haspiel story that's really about romantic love (and a decade old), it's kind of easy to feel cheated with this issue. It's also easy to see an absence of male objectification in this issue. Aside from the problems, the good in this issue is really good, and allowing stories from previous issue to carry over means the end of the god-awful “49^th Key.”

Anthologies of Serial Exposure

They come and go, get canceled without notice, sometimes only get released once a year, and move to digital publication. This is the way of serial comic anthologies.

Serial comic book anthologies used to be the most popular comic books on news stands. Publishers like Marvel and DC would use them to introduce new characters and gauge fan response to those characters. Collecting stories linked by genres such as horror, crime, talking animals and action, publishers like EC Comics specialized in anthologies filled with short stories created by legends such as Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman and Joe Orlando. Despite being so popular, these anthologies began to dwindle in production after Dr. Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, a book that included comics in the blame for juvenile delinquency.

Werthem's book prompted the creation of the Comics Code Authority, an organization that began policing comics with its own sense of acceptable standards in 1954. These standards eventually made it impossible for publishers like EC to continue publishing anthologies with so much violence, partial nudity, and blood. Another reason anthologies seemed to go away is because many of them turned their covers over to the most popular character featured in its pages. Even with the CCA seal of approval on it's cover, Marvel's Tales of Suspense would become Captain America and Tales to Astonish would become The Incredible Hulk. This change would leave characters with story-lines in those books to either get their own titles –if they were popular enough– or stay in the cannon for safe keeping.

By the mid 1960's, comics had became focused mainly on the exploits of a single character or the adventures of a team, regardless of genre. But, underground comics of the 1960's and 1970's were just around the corner. This new-wave of comics would bring together short stories by the likes of R. Crumb, Diane Noonin, Kim Deitch and Spain with popular anthologies and their publishers, Print Mint, Last Gasp and Rip-Off Press would make several printings of them.

By the 1980's, the underground comics movement would shift into something focusing on creator driven comics like Love and Rockets and Cerebus. Still, the serial comic anthology survived. Dark Horse Presents, Papercutters, Negative Burn, Kramers Ergot, 2000 AD, and dozens of others kept anthologies on shelves while single-story comics and graphic novels grew to become the big draw for  readers. Now, in the 2010's, serialized comic anthologies may be making a come back with Heavy Metal (published since 1977), Amazing Forest and Island offering some of the best variety in comics.   

Now eight issues in, Island has tied together a wide range of artists, genres, styles and ideas to create an anthology with a focus on new and underground talent. These forces come together to question the idea of what belongs in a modern anthology comic. Most issues open with either splash pages or short stories to introduce readers to a new world. Sometimes a city, sometimes a landscape, mostly wordless, these new environments start off each issue by bringing reader into an unfamiliar world. This sense of the unexplored plays on the title of the book and the way it doesn't always contain what readers would expect from a mainstream comic.

Though it's sold in comic shops, Island comes with prose stories including sparse illustrations. Some stories come in the style of classic zine articles, with handwritten text and black and white images with a xeroxed appearance. Add occasional photography, interviews and essays, and you have something that distances itself from traditional comics. This is all part of Island's charm; it doesn't limit itself to just being a comic or publishing stories that necessarily fit together. It doesn't try to make thematic issues, though the theme of world-building does seem to reappear. It simply gives an audience whatever Brandon Graham and Emma Rios think deserves a spotlight.

In issue six, Onta's “Badge of Pride” takes the lion's share of the pages to tell a furry story dealing with a character figuring out his own sexual identity. In the same issue, there is a splash page where one fashionably dressed woman is reaching to strangle another fashionably dressed woman wielding a knife. This scene is by Katie Skelly (Nurse Nurse) and does a great job at parodying photography ads with a list of merchandise used in the photo along with the prices of the items.

With plenty of one-off stories, Island also takes on long-form stories that get split up between issues. Published in the first two issues is “I.D.” from Emma Rios. Creating the story of a groups of people that swap bodies for various reasons, Rios hits on topics of gender politics, race, personal identity and bigotry in an Orwellian future that is written as well as it is drawn. While the story is based around a science fiction concept, it uses its genre well to take on serious topics without being undermined by usual tropes in a way similar to “Badge of Pride.”

The way Island blends together genres, styles and photography make it an exciting roll of the dice when you pick up each issue. The looseness of the comic also makes it possible to pair those types of stories with what someone might expect from Brandon Graham after reading his work. In “Habitat,” Graham collaborator Simon Roy uses robots, class war, mutiny and ancient forces to play with ideas of what it means to be on the right side and what the right side is. Taking place on a green planet filled with technology, stone houses and Aztec-like ruins, readers meet Cho, a new recruit. After Cho finds a mysterious object, he is set on and adventure that will change the history of his people. Though Graham's own contribution continues his work in the Multiple Warheads universe, something similar to “Habitat” happens as both stories are very much concerned with adventure and taking readers through the imagination and excitement of exotic spaces.

Six months after Island hit the stands, Amazing Forest, an anthology published by IDW, came out. Six issues in, this monthly title contains short stories written by the creative team of Erik Freitas and Ulises Farinas. Unlike Island, with it's water color introductions and photography, Amazing Forest has has nothing so art-housey found between the covers. What makes this anthology unique is the creative process where the team of writers handle all scripts and assign different illustrator to each story. By giving over the scripts to a different artist, the writers not only get more hands to put the book together on time, they get to create stories that take on different visual tones. This variety gives the audience an introduction to a range of artists and self contained stories while turning each issue into its own independent document.

With each month's different set of stories and artists, the issues go in and out of genres like fantasy, science fiction, and fairy-tales. This open form gives the writers the opportunity for a humorous homage to Fletcher Hanks's super hero, Stardust. Each issue's different roster of illustrators creates a diversity that leaves readers not knowing what they're getting into when picking up the next issue. And this is a good thing! The covers may have one story being reflected on it, but when you're dealing with characters you've never seen before, it's difficult to know exactly what it's foreshadowing.

In issue three, Job Yamen's fine lines and water colors form the world of “Ben Franklin, Dragon Hunter,” a story that portrays Ben Franklin as an immortal dragon hunter. This lush but gritty alternative reality gives a short history of dragon hunters and explains Franklin's connection to it. While the story works well, ending in time to make the reader's mind continue to turn with its own theories, "Ben Franklin, Dragon Hunter” could only be better if it went on for more pages. “Edith And The Murderbot,” from issue four, is another example of the writing team pairing a great artist with the right script. Using Jelena Djordevic's expressive faces and masterful crosshatching, the story creates an uncomfortably paced story with an equally eerie plot twist to makes for a great macabre suspense story.

The two writers even go into super hero territory. In “Villain's Friend,” Jack Forbes uses a Miracleman-esque character to answer the question: what would happen if a villain beat all the heroes? In a world where the last living super hero is enslaved, Freitas and Farinas get the chance to make jokes about super heroes. With a villain ruling the planet, tropes get flipped on their heads to make belly laughs and show people what would happen in a world where all the heroes lost.

It's not just occasional jokes that lighten up the stories in Amazing Forest. With a good amount of humor coming from the writers, the stories don't always take themselves too seriously. On these occasions, the artists chosen tend to have more of a cartoony aesthetic, which showcase the creators ability to use good judgment and find good talent to create a fresh take on serial comics anthologies.

In publication for the better part of 40 years (more if you count the magazine it was originally translated from), Heavy Metal isn't new at all. For quite a while it has specialized in rounding up and serializing some of the best European and American comics artists working with fantasy, barely clothed people, science fiction, erotica, sword and sorcery adventures, horror, and did I mention sex? Heavy Metal has been showcasing selections from artist portfolios, taking chances on new talent, and exposing North America to the great comics scene in Europe since before publishers like Catalan Communications made it their goal to collect and translate great works from across the Atlantic. The only difference is that Heavy Metal is still around while Catalan Communications sadly became defunct. What is new about Heavy Metal is the presence of Grant Morrison as the Editor-In-Chief.

With most serialized stories from previous issues almost wrapped up, Heavy Metal #280 shows the taste and talent of Grant Morrison building the index of the institutional publication with the following course:

“This, out rebirth issue, features my first gleaning from the bulging Heavy Metal submissions drawer. Presented with hundreds of stories – I mean literally, honestly, hundreds or more, possibly thousands, or millions, or even fifteen, who can take the time to count these days? - I started the selection process with this lot.”

If that's the true way he went about picking stories or not, Morrison manages to put together one of the most diverse collections out there. The nudity in this issue either plays to a story where the characters are savages, shooting arrows in a bizarre loop of unrequited love (Massimiliano Frezzato's wordless “The Key”), or in a naked, not nude, representation that works with the uncomfortable nature of memories, trauma and what happens in the mind's eye in Anna Laurine Kornum's “Mind Bomb.” With Kornum's story, dark colors surround characters with big black eyes. The nameless main character takes readers through her childhood, where she was obsessed with the atomic bomb and visited by what she thinks is an angel of death. The dark eyes and way Kornum plays with bright whites and dark shades makes powerful visuals that compliment a story that concerns itself with how mental health is effected by suppressed memories that can explode at any moment.

Aside from the continued stories of Erike Lewis, J.K. Woodward and Enki Bilal, the newest issue of Heavy Metal shows it will go on to show contributions with the familiar Heavy Metal feel. “Goddess,” by Ryan Ferrier & Hugo Petrus is one of these stories. When a mysterious girl is found, she is invited into a town of very friendly people that want to help and feed her. The only problem is that the girl is constantly seeing images of animals being slaughtered… and that she isn't really a little girl at all. In “Goddess,” fine lines, attention to detail and a green palate use a style of realism that echoes Heavy Metal stories of the past and compliments the pastoral story of Flidias, an Irish goddess that protects animals and nature. Another staple that remains is the art section. Century Guild art Gallery selects some of its favorite art nouveau silent film posters and oil paintings for issue 280. One of them is Gail Potockiose's beautiful “Botanical No. 23,” which is also used as an an alternative cover.

Filling his debut issue with stories that go through genres of horror, fantasy and lore, Morrison finds room for comedy with Aladin Saad's absurd “Boring Sequential Story.” References to Batman, Tintin and Little Nemo build a typo-ridden, self-aware misadventure of Galileo and his enchanted telescope. While it's hard to actually read through its typos and broken grammar, Saad's goal is to disregard rules of storytelling as he breaks the fourth wall to mix pastiche and irreverence. The other good laugh in Heavy Metal is Morrison's own contribution, the first part of “Beachhead,” a tongue-in-cheek story about violent aliens taking over the galaxy told with a 2000 AD visual look.

Morrison's most interesting and nontraditional picks is the story “Salsa Invertabraxa,” a six part story that will run through his first year. With hyper-detailed digital panels depicting the world of insects, artist Mozchops narrates the habitats and life-styles of invertebrates. In “Salsa Invertabraxa,” each panel is paired with a simple rhyme scheme narrative caption. By uses this poetic device, Mozchop makes his comic sometimes come off as a children's book, something more Eric Carle than Erik Larsen. Using a story with a form as quirky as “Salsa Invertabraxa,” Morrison starts to challenge the idea of what a comic is. He also keeps his readers on their toes wondering what he'll throw at them next.

Anthologies of the past and some of the present have a tendency to bunch together a type of story, whether it be books of the golden age that grouped stories by genre, or the annual collections of today that build books on independent artists or autobiographical stories. With Heavy Metal, Amazing Forest, and Island, three different types of books are being published. Each has a different vision and creative focus. Each brings together and uses different talent in a different way to build a title. But what they do the same is what makes them something to look forward to every month. They all mix it up. Most importantly, they ask you to trust to the editors. Trusting the people that put these books together is one of the few ways to get exposure to new and foreign talent that are asking what comics are and challenge the possibilities of what they can be. 

Grant Morrison & The Aftershock of Comics, or The World of Comic Books Is Exploding & A New Universe Is Blooming

A lot has been going in the word recently. There's wars going on overseas. Gay marriage became legal countrywide and the threat level went up on July 4th for the U.S. Google and Apple are spitting on each other for some new bout of nonsense that will most likely be settled in an overly long legal dispute.  But, none of that matters anymore because it's only two days old and this week is one of the most exciting things to happen to comics in a long time. The bad news is that on both counts, you're going to have to wait a while before any of it actually happens. Still, the news is very exciting! Yesterday, it was announced that Grant Morrison (yes, that Grant Morrison) will be the new editor-in-chief for Heavy Metal Magazine (yes, that Heavy Metal). If that isn't equal part exciting and wonderful, let me make it even weirder than Morrison's mind could conjure up by telling you Entertainment Weekly (yes, that Entertainment Weekly) broke the story. It will be very interesting to see what Morrison does with the magazine, considering how the publication has evolved into something that has many stories that focus on either a tone of heavy violence, elements of softcore pornography, or a mix thereof, and Morrison's stories are usually weird yarns that make you feel like you've been shooting up heroin with the ghost of Buddha and listening to the Dalai Lama divulge the secrets of the universe. Or maybe they're just incoherent gibberish. Either way, Morrison's stories are a rollercoaster ride that everyone should take the time to enjoy, while many Heavy Metal stories past the mid 80's are more action/adventure and T&A sensationalism. For that reason, it's hard to place Morrison in the world of contemporary Heavy Metal, but that may not be what will happen when you consider what the man has to say:

We’re trying to bring back some of that ’70s punk energy of Heavy Metal, but update it and make it new again. One of the things I like to do in my job is revamp properties and really get into the aesthetic of something, dig into the roots of what makes it work, then tinker with the engine and play around with it. So for me, it’s an aesthetic thing first and foremost. The idea of immersing myself in the aesthetic of Heavy Metal is exciting. It’s going to change the clothes I wear, the way I create; it’s like a performance for me. Beyond that, just the idea of being able to curate stories, decide the direction of the magazine, and work with great talent and develop new talent is an exciting opportunity.

The idea of digging into the roots of Heavy Metal, a place where artists like Moebius, Bilal, Loustal, Boucq and Crepax enriched the soil, may be one of the things that is missing from comics today. While the prime usual suspects of Heavy Metal didn't shy away from sex and violence, they brought american audiences styles of art that hadn't been seen in comics and told stories that no U.S. publisher would dare tell (they had the comics code). The roots of Heavy Metal didn't just bud glorified smut and violence, they sprouted original comics stories and highbrow erotica. To revamp that plant as e-i-c might be one way to fertilize minds that Morrison hasn't pollinated yet, it may go up in smoke, but knowing morrison, it'll be one hell of a burning bush if it does. (Yes, I intentionally kept that metaphor going that long to juxt-a-pose Morrisons mixed one).

On the other end of comics news is Aftershock Comics. While Image Comics has been showing Vertigo that they've been in a bit of a dizzy spell for about a decade when it comes to creator-owned work, Aftershock has announced that it will be coming to comic shops in a big way by publishing creator-owned work from writers like Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, Paul Jenkins, Garth Ennis, Justin Jordan, Phil Hester, Neil Gaiman, Frank Barbiere and Marguerite Bennett. If you haven't heard of Aftershock, that may be because they haven't released anything yet or because their site isn't fully developed. One great thing about Aftershock also involves its editor-in-chief. Mike Marts, former executive of the X-Men line will be taking the helm of e-i-c for Aftershock and explains, "When we launched AfterShock, our mission was to attract the best comic book creators in the business, and we're beyond excited to develop original projects with these industry leaders, but it’s only the beginning." With Gaiman, Ennis and Palmiotti, it's hard to imagine Aftershock not doing well. It's even harder to imagine their panel at San Diego Comic Con not being flooded with that name recognition. What makes them most interesting is the mission statement on their Facebook page, which reads, "Aftershock is a comic book company that combines the creative edge of an independent comic book publisher with the strengths of a traditional one." While this statement is vague, it hints at some promising possibilities like the idea of world building through serial titles that may have finite runs, but begin, middle and end like proper stories. With a mission statement like this, it echoes the idea of what CrossGen set out to do while mixing in the sensibility of classic Vertigo. Making a statement on his participation with the new publisher, Ennis offers some insight saying, “AfterShock looks to be making all the right moves. I’m delighted by the arrival of a new home for independent, creator-­owned comics.”

Comic Con may shed more light on these projects and answer questions, but Morrison's Heavy Metal and Aftershock sound like they will shake up the world of comics by doing what no one expected and the big two will regret not doing in the first place, giving fans what they already like and presenting it them in a way they never knew they'd love.