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.”