March 24, 2012
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: ‘Screaming Metal’) is a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Moebius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as ‘Les Humanoïdes Associés’ (‘United Humanoids’), which became the name of the publishing house releasing ‘Métal Hurlant.’ It was published in the US by National Lampoon under the title ‘Heavy Metal.’
The magazine was originally released quarterly; it consisted of 68 pages, of which only 18 were in color. Contributors included Moebius and Druillet, and such characters Arzach and Lone Sloane. Later issues featured Richard Corben, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin and many others. Apart from comics, the magazine contained articles about science fiction books and movies, as well as music and videogame reviews. ‘Metal Hurlant,’ emphasizing complex graphics, cinematic imagery and surreal storylines, was highly influential throughout the world as one of the first mature expressions of ‘adult’ comic book making. It ceased publication in 1987.
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March 24, 2012
Blueberry is a Franco-Belgian comics western series created by the Belgian scriptwriter Jean-Michel Charlier and French comics artist Jean Moebius’ Giraud. It chronicles the adventures of Mike ‘Blueberry’ Donovan on his travels through the American Old West. Blueberry is an atypical western hero; he is not a wandering lawman who brings evil-doers to justice, nor a handsome cowboy who ‘rides into town, saves the ranch, becomes the new sheriff and marries the schoolmarm.’
He is accompanied in many tales by his hard-drinking deputy, Jimmy McClure, and later also by Red Woolley, a rugged pioneer. Donovan is the son of a rich Southern farmer and started as a dedicated racist. He was framed for a murder he did not commit, had to flee and was saved by an African-American. He became an enemy of discrimination of all kinds, fought against the Confederates (although he was a Southerner himself), and tried to protect the rights of Native Americans.
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March 24, 2012
The Incal is a set of science fiction comic book series written in French by Alejandro Jodorowsky and illustrated by Moebius and others. ‘The Incal’ takes place in, and introduced Jodorowsky’s ‘Jodoverse,’ a fictional universe in which his science fiction comics take place. The story begins in the dystopian capital city of an insignificant planet in a human-dominated galactic empire. The series stars John DiFool, anoccasional bodyguard. DiFool has no interest in being a hero, has mood swings and suffers from self-doubt and temper tantrums in which he threatens to walk away and assume a comfortable lifeh. He has a fondness for cigars, ‘ouisky’ and ‘homeosluts’ (gynoid prostitutes).
The series mixes space opera, metaphysics, and satire; a counterpoint to the grandiosity of the events is always Difool’s base, even cowardly nature. Every major character in The Incal is based upon Tarot cards – for example, John Difool is based upon The Fool with his name being a pun upon ‘John, the Fool.’ Moebius and Jodorowsky sued Luc Besson, director of ‘The Fifth Element,’ claiming that the film borrowed graphic and story elements from ‘The Incal,’ but they lost their case. In a 2002 interview with Danish comic book magazine ‘Strip!,’ Jodorowsky actually claimed that he considered it an honor that somebody stole his ideas, saying he believes that authors do not create the stories they tell as much as they make personal interpretations of mythemes shared by the collective unconscious.
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March 24, 2012
‘The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius’ (‘Le Garage Hermétique de Jerry Cornelius’) is a lengthy comic strip work by the artist and writer Moebius (real name Jean Giraud). It first appeared in discrete two-to-four page episodes, in the French magazine ‘Metal Hurlant’ between 1976 and 1980, and later in the American version of the same magazine, ‘Heavy Metal,’ starting in 1977.
‘The Airtight Garage’ was followed by ‘L’Homme du Ciguri’ (‘The Man from the Ciguri’) in 1995. Some of the characters from these stories also show up in the 1974 comic ‘Le Bandard Fou’ (‘The Horny Goof’), which can be considered a prequel. The story is at times confusing, as Moebius was making it up as he went along. The ‘garage’ itself is actually an asteroid in the constellation Leo which houses a pocket universe. Major Grubert orbits the asteroid in his spaceship Ciguri, from which he oversees the development of the worlds contained within. Several entities, including Jerry Cornelius, seek to invade the garage.
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March 24, 2012
Arzach is a comic book collection of four wordless short stories by artist/author Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud, which were originally published in the French sci-fi/fantasy comics magazine ‘Métal Hurlant,’ (published in the US as ‘Heavy Metal’).
The stories follow Arzach, a silent warrior who rides a pterodactyl-like creature through a strange, desolate landscape. The imagery and situations in Arzach are often compared to dreams or the subconscious. These stories had an enormous impact on the French comics industry, and the Arzach character is still among Moebius’ most famous creations.
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March 24, 2012
Jean Giraud (1938 – 2012) was a French comics artist, working in the French tradition of bandes dessinées (Franco-Belgian comics). Giraud earned worldwide fame, predominantly under the pseudonym ‘Moebius,’ and to a lesser extent ‘Gir,’ the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist’s paintings. Esteemed by Federico Fellini, Stan Lee, and Hayao Miyazaki among others, he received international acclaim. He has been described as the most influential bandes dessinées artist after ‘Tintin’ creator Hergé.
Among Giraud’s most famous works are the Western comic series ‘Blueberry’ he co-created with writer Jean-Michel Charlier, one of the first Western anti-heroes to appear in comics. Under the pseudonym Moebius he created a wide range of science fiction and and fantasy comics in a highly imaginative and surreal almost abstract style, the most famous of which are ‘Arzach,’ the ‘Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius,’ and ‘The Incal.’
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March 24, 2012
‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ also published as “The Hounds of Zaroff”, is a short story by Richard Connell. It was published in ‘Collier’s Weekly’ in 1924. Widely anthologized, and the author’s best-known work, it features as its main character a big-game hunter from New York, who falls off a yacht and swims to an isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted by a Cossack aristocrat. The story is an inversion of the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s.
The story has been adapted for film numerous times. The most significant of these adaptations (and the only one to use the original characters) was RKO’s ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ released in 1932, having been shot (mostly at night) on sets used during the day for the ‘Skull Island’ sequences of ‘King Kong.’ The film added two other principal characters: brother and sister pair Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray) and Martin Trowbridge (Robert Armstrong). (Wray and Armstrong were also filming King Kong on the same sets during the day.)
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March 24, 2012
The 10th Victim (Italian: ‘La decima vittima’) is a 1965 Italian/French international co-production science fiction film directed by Elio Petri. It is based on Robert Sheckley’s 1953 short story ‘Seventh Victim.’ Sheckley later published a novelization of the film in 1966. In the near future, big wars are avoided by giving individuals with violent tendencies a chance to kill in the ‘Big Hunt.’ The Hunt is the most popular form of entertainment in the world and also attracts participants who are looking for fame and fortune. It includes ten rounds for each competitor, five as the hunter and five as the victim. The survivor of ten rounds becomes extremely wealthy and retires.
Scenes switch between the pursuit, romance between the hunter and the victim, and a narrator explaining the rules and justification of the Hunt. Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress) is the huntress armed with a high caliber Bosch shotgun looking for her tenth victim. Marcello Poletti (Marcello Mastroianni) is the victim. He is reluctant to kill Meredith as he is not sure whether she is his hunter, but then later because they become romantically involved. To maximize financial gain, Meredith wants to get a perfect kill in front of the cameras as she has negotiated a major sponsor from the Ming Tea Company.
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March 24, 2012
The Prize of Peril is a science fiction short-story by Robert Sheckley, written in 1958 and first published in the collection ‘Store of Infinity’ in 1960 by Bantam Books. The short story is noted for its plot’s anticipation of Reality television shows such as Survivor and Fear Factor by several decades. The screenplay for the fake German reality show ‘Das Millionenspiel’ (‘The Million Game’) was based on the story, as was the French film version of ‘Das Millionenspiel,’ ‘Le prix du danger.’ The protagonist of the story is Jim Raeder, a man only notable due to his normality, who has been a participant in many reality television-shows (given the name ‘thrill shows’) and thus become a celebrity.
In all the shows the risk of dying has been a part of the concept; he has fought a real bull in Spain, he has driven a Formula 1-car, and fought with other divers while trying to escape sharks and other sea monsters. In the story he partakes in the greatest of all reality shows; he is to be hunted by professional gangland murderers. As he is hunted, his journey is shown all over the US on TV and he receives help from the viewers; the so called Good Samaritans and the commentator, Mike Terry, makes a point of this during the show: ‘All of America is ready to help Jim!,’ but Raeder soon finds out that things are not what he expected them to be and that maybe his survival is not the main priority among the public. The story ends with Raeder winning The Prize of Peril, but being dragged away after presumably having a mental breakdown, not being ‘himself’ at the moment according to Terry.
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March 24, 2012
The Running Man is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus ‘The Bachman Books.’ The novel is set in a dystopian United States during the year 2025, in which the nation’s economy is in ruins and world violence is rising.
The story follows protagonist Ben Richards as he participates in the game show ‘The Running Man’ in which contestants, allowed to go anywhere in the world, are chased by ‘Hunters,’ employed to kill them. ‘The Running Man’ was loosely adapted into a film with the same name, which was released five years after the book in 1987. The film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Richards.
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March 24, 2012
Battle Royale is a 2000 Japanese thriller film based on the novel of the same name by Koushun Takami. It was directed by Kinji Fukasaku. The film tells the story of a high-school student struggling with the death of his father who is forced by the government to compete in a deadly game, where the students must kill each other in order to win. The film aroused international controversy and was either banned or excluded from distribution in many countries, but was a domestic blockbuster, and is one of the 10-highest grossing films in Japan.
Kinji Fukasaku stated that he decided to direct the film because the novel it was adapted from reminded him of his time as a 15-year-old munitions factory worker during World War II. At that time, his class was made to work in a munitions factory. In July 1945, the factory came under artillery fire. The children could not escape so they dived under each other for cover. The surviving members of the class had to dispose of the corpses. At that point, Fukasaku realized that the Japanese government was lying about World War II, and he developed a burning hatred of adults in general that he maintained for a long time afterwards.
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March 24, 2012
Battle Royale is a 1999 Japanese novel written by Koushun Takami about schoolchildren who are forced to fight each other to the death. The novel has been adapted into a 2000 film and a manga series. The story takes place in an alternate timeline—Japan is a member region of a totalitarian state known as the Republic of Greater East Asia. Under the guise of a ‘study trip,’ a group of students are gassed on a bus. They awaken in the Okishima Island School on an isolated, evacuated island (modeled after the island of Ogijima). They learn that they have been placed in an event called the Program.
Officially a military research project, it is a means of terrorizing the population, of creating such paranoia as to make organized insurgency impossible. The Program began in 1947. According to the rules fifty third-year high school classes are selected (prior to 1950, forty-seven classes were selected) annually to participate in the Program for research purposes. The students from a single class are isolated and are required to fight the other members from their class to the death. The Program ends when only one student remains, with that student being declared the winner.
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