June 6, 2019
Issue 293 of Heavy Metal — currently available in comics shops and the Heavy Metal online store — is our “Beyond the Darkness Special.” We love darkness, don’t you? But it gets weird when you go beyond the darkness. You might find yourself in a strange land where dark is happy and happy is dark, witnessing scenes like these, visions from the shadowy noggin of Danish artist John Kenn Mortensen. We’ve included a selection of Mortensen’s macabre drawings as a featured gallery in the issue, along with an interview with the man himself. We asked why his drawings depict so many threatened children. He replied:
The scariest and worst thing in our world is children dying. Bad things happening to children is also a bit funny as well, isn’t it?
He’s not wrong, but saying it out loud is just sort of — wrong, you know? And about the giant empty ghostlike figures who are swallowing up the kids in some of his pictures, he says:
Being consumed by unending empty space is absolutely horrible! That is even worse than children dying.
Let’s hope we never find out. We won’t give away any more of the interview — it’s in issue 293, remember — but we will point you to John Kenn Mortensen’s online store and his Instagram page, where these images were initially posted. The pictures here are a completely different selection from what’s in the magazine, and the captions are Mortensen’s own. Enjoy the darkness.
Where is your head at?
Leave me alone
Monster tripping
Have a look
Mimes from hell
Sail away
Illustrating The Brothers Grimm. The Girl without hands.
Sk8 to death
Puppet!
Seven sinister sisters
About Heavy Metal
First published in 1977, Heavy Metal Magazine, the world’s foremost illustrated magazine, explores fantastic and surrealistic worlds, alternate realities, science fiction and horror, in the past, present, and future. Writers and illustrators from around the world take you to places you never dreamed existed. Heavy Metal Magazine was the first publisher to bring European legends like Mœbius, Philippe Caza, Guido Crepax, Philippe Druillet, Tanino Liberatore, Milo Manara, Enki Bilal, and Pepe Moreno to the U.S. while showcasing non-mainstream American superstars like Richard Corben, Berni Wrightson, Arthur Suydam, Vaughn Bode and Frank Frazetta. The magazine continues to showcase amazing new talent along with established creators. Heavy Metal Magazine features serialized and standalone stories, artist galleries, short stories in prose and interviews.
Heavy Metal is a 1981 Canadian adult animated science fantasy anthology film directed by Gerald Potterton (in his director debut) and produced by Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel, who also was the publisher of Heavy Metal magazine, which was the basis for the film. It starred the voices of Rodger Bumpass, Jackie Burroughs, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Don Francks, Martin Lavut, Marilyn Lightstone, Eugene Levy, Alice Playten, Harold Ramis, Percy Rodriguez, Susan Roman, Richard Romanus, August Schellenberg, John Vernon, and Zal Yanovsky. The screenplay was written by Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum.
The film is an anthology of various science-fiction and fantasy stories tied together by a single theme of an evil force that is "the sum of all evils". It was adapted from Heavy Metal magazine and original stories in the same spirit. Like the magazine, the film features a great deal of graphic violence, sexuality, and nudity. Its production was expedited by having several animation houses working simultaneously on different segments.
Its soundtrack was packaged by music manager Irving Azoff and included several popular rock bands and artists, including Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Sammy Hagar, Don Felder, Cheap Trick, DEVO, Journey, and Nazareth, among others.
The Definitive brand in fantasy, science fiction, and horror.
