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Heavy Metal is a science fiction and fantasy comics magazine published in the United States since 1977. The publication is most recognised for its dark fantasy/science fiction, eroticism, and steampunk comics.

Heavy Metal, unlike typical American comic books of the period, which the Comics Code Authority governed, included explicit material. Enki Bilal, Philippe Caza, Guido Crepax, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Claude Forest, Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius), Chantal Montellier, and Milo Manara contributed to the journal, which began as a licenced translation of the French science-fiction magazine Métal hurlant.

Heavy Metal published European art not previously seen in the United States, as well as demonstrating an underground comix sensibility that “wasn’t as harsh or extreme as some of the underground comix ” but… intended for an older readership,” according to cartoonist/publisher Kevin Eastman.

While publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris in the mid-1970s to kick-start the French version of National Lampoon, he came across Métal hurlant (which had debuted in 1975). “Howling Metal” is the direct translation of the French title.

Heavy Metal debuted in the United States as a glossy, full-color monthly in April 1977. The expenditure for reproducing the colour pages in the US version was considerably lowered because they had previously been filmed in France.

Under the name HM Communications, Inc., Mogel published Heavy Metal. After nine years as a monthly, Heavy Metal shifted to a quarterly schedule in the winter of 1986, which it maintained until March 1989, when it reverted to a bi-monthly schedule. From April 1977 through March 1992, HM Communications produced 136 issues in 16 volumes. (In the meantime, the original Métal Hurlant had stopped being published in France in 1987.) Les Humanodes Associés relaunched it in July 2002, but it folded again in 2004.)

Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a lifelong Heavy Metal fan, took over the magazine’s publishing in May 1992, with volume 16 under the name Metal Mammoth, Inc.

In January 2014, Eastman sold the magazine to David Boxenbaum, a digital and music veteran, and Jeff Krelitz, a film producer. Eastman remained the magazine’s publisher and is now a minority shareholder in the new Heavy Metal, which Heavy Metal Media, LLC, publishes. Heavy Metal had a leadership shift in 2019, with CEO Matthew Medney and Creative Overlord David Erwin taking over (Formerly of DC Entertainment).

Sean Kelly and Valerie Marchant were the first editors of Heavy Metal in the United States. Peter Kleinman was the company’s first design director. At Mogel’s request, he designed the original Heavy Metal logo and was in charge of the first issue’s launch and art direction. He then engaged John Workman, a designer and letterer with expertise at DC Comics and other companies, to work on the magazine.

After two years, Mogel decided that the magazine’s lack of text content was a disadvantage. In 1979, he replaced Kelly and Marchant with Ted White, a well-known science fiction editor responsible for the revitalization of Amazing Stories and Fantastic from 1968 and 1978. White, Workman, and Julie Simmons-Lynch, then associate editor, instantly redesigned Heavy Metal, adding new tales and comics by American artists such as Arthur Suydam, Dan Steffan, Howard Cruse, and Bernie Wrightson.

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