8 Gallery on MATTHEW LAZNICKA
13 TAROT CARDS by Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo, and Anthony Palumbo 18 DOSSIER by S.C. Ringgenberg 22 THE MEAT Story: Roberto Ricci, Art: Matteo Simonacci 29 24 HOUR MAN and TM 2001 Epoch Ink Corp.
Writers: Joe Pearson & Jeff Conner, Artist: Young Ki Yoon, Colorist: Sungha
Hwang, Lettering: Comicraft
62 SOMEWHERE ON THE EAST RIVER by James Ortega
67 SLAUGHTER OF THE EXTERMINATORS
Writer: Horatio Weisfeld Artist: Rafael Kayanan
79 THE KISS by Ferran Xalabarder
119 Artist Studio on GABRIEL IPPOLITI
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
Hey Guys,
By the time you read this we'll have a new President. Looking forward to that,
and although I have made up my own mind some time ago who I'd vote for, I won't
share that with you here but have and will be sharing more of those kinds of "political"
thoughts with any of the gang hanging out on the message boards between writing
this and the election. One of the many reasons I'm bringing it up here, is if
you bought this issue off the newsstand you'll notice a slight cover price increase,
the first in SEVEN years by the way, which is heartbreaking for us to do—but
a sign of the times. Something which we all here hope will get better soon...I'd
love to be able to come back to you in a year telling you we're lowering the price.
Okay, let me tell you why this issue is worth the extra cash...
I want to welcome Mr. Kovack back to the front cover. He's getting to be a regular
and fan favorite—glad everybody likes his work as much as I do. On the back
cover Young Yoon and Director Lee provided a killer front cover quality painting
based on the "24 Hour Man" feature story within, but we ran into a scheduling
conflict! Sorry guys, but I can promise the fans it will be sported on the front
cover of the collected.
As mentioned above, "24 Hour Man" (part one) was the main story in our
July 2001 issue and finally after many years of hard work, the guys have slam
dunked the final installment for this issue. If you want to find out why it took
so long, wait till you see one of the future Galleries we'll be running in 2009
on "War of the Worlds: Golaith", the animated film that Joe Pearson
and Young have been working on for some time now. Exceptionally cool stuff.
The talent in the three Gallery sections in this issue blows me away! Heavy Metal
has always been about the art, and when we added the second gallery, the "Artist
Studio" the fans went wild, so when we had the chance to do a third as a
special guest series/gallery style feature, we took the plunge! Thanks to Matt
Laznicka (Gallery), Gabriel Ippoliti (Artist Studio), as well as Julie, Boris,
and Anthony for the "Tarot Cards" artists feature!
For our usual fantastic array of short stories, Ricci and Simonacci sent along
a twisted tale we couldn't resist entitled, "The Meat", while James
Ortega spins a yarn of a different sort with "Somewhere On The East River."
Nice job. Our old pal Ferran Xalabarder sent us "The Kiss" and we fell
for it, before selecting the final ditty by Horatio Weisfeld and Rafael Kayanan
called, "Slaughter Of The Exterminators!" (Love that title!)
Okay, I'm going to wrap this up by thanking S.C. for his Dossier work as always,
but ALSO want to part by saying, I know this has been a super tough year for our
country, and all of us in it...I do hope all of you, your families and loved ones
are hanging in there, and like all of us here—here's hoping for "real
change" in the next four years.
