A Sense of Doubt blog post #3638 - Covers of Metal Hurlant - Comic Book Sunday for 2502.02

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3638 - Covers of Metal Hurlant - Comic Book Sunday for 2502.02

Much like Warren Ellis needed an easy newsletter last week, I need an easy blog post today.

Just a share but check out these gorgeous Metal Hurlant covers!

Happy Comic Book Sunday!

Thanks for tuning in!

The Covers Of Screaming Metal Orbital Operations for 26 January 2025

ORBITAL

The Covers Of METAL HURLANT

It’s 1975, you’re passing a newsstand or looking at a magazine shelf through a shop window, and you see this. What do you do?

You go looking for it again, and you find this:

What the fuck just happened?

It took them a few issues to settle on a logo - the first few issues, the logo was different every time. But these two early covers: they just go for you.

METAL HURLANT was founded by Druillet, who did the cover up top, Moebius, who did the second cover I’ve shown you, the wonderful Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. I used to know Jean-Pierre, and he’s just the most marvellous person. Quite mad, of course. But you’d expect him to be. He ran METAL HURLANT.

METAL HURLANT was an iconic French comics anthology magazine. Back then, comics anthology magazines in Europe were sold in newsagents alongside all the other magazines. You could go and pick up your newspaper, the tv guide, your car magazine and an anthology comic all in the same place. While fending off dinosaurs and foraging for berries, yes yes I know.

Here’s HR Giger covering the magazine in 1977:

Bear in mind that the event that made Giger’s name worldwide, the film ALIEN, didn’t come out until 1979. Which reminds me of this, slight detour:

This was, I believe, the first time Escher had been showcased in print in England, well ahead of pretty much everyone else. Perhaps hard to imagine now, but, way back when, these little magazines on the edges of the culture were where the future leaked in.

Remember my three rules for covers the other week?

A comic cover must speak to the tone and themes of the work inside. It must stand out on the shelves or webpage. It must be a beautiful object that you would like to have in your home.

We are not always going to agree on rule 3. But in periodicals you get to try again, month after month. So, if you want to get weird one month? The hell with it. There’s always next month.

I have cherry-picked. It was a magazine “of its time,” as we say now, so there’s a lot of cheesy-looking tits-out-for-the-lads covers. But when these covers hit? They really hit.

If you want to learn about comics, and you haven’t taken a good look at the long history of European comics, find the time. It’s a global artform and everyone does it differently. All kinds of lessons you can learn, and, frankly, all kinds of stuff you can pinch.

(I really need to get into ESCAPE magazine soon, which introduced me to a lot of stuff when I was a kid.)

If you want to go deeper, here’s a link to 148 METAL HURLANT covers.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2502.02 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3502 days ago & DAD = 158 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.