Kevin Eastman - Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal

Kevin Eastman has been a longtime fan of the science fiction and fantasy magazine, much of whose content was translated from the French, and appeared in the original Métal Hurlant publication of which Heavy Metal is only the American-licensed incarnation. He cites it (after Jack Kirby) as bringing to his attention the "second greatest influence" on him as an artist, Richard Corben. He saw in its pages European art which had not been previously seen in the United States, as well as an underground comix sensibility that nonetheless "wasn't as harsh or extreme as some of the underground comix - but... definitely intended for an older readership."

Discovering that Heavy Metal had been put up for sale, and with one of Tundra's stated aims being to bring a more adult sensibility (and mature, adult readers) to comics overlapping with the magazine's target audience, Eastman decided that Heavy Metal was "the final piece of the puzzle", and looked into purchasing it. Noting that:

"In my life, too many things have happened in a weird, sort of shit-luck sort of fashion," Eastman purchased the magazine in January 1992.

Despite the audiences for Heavy Metal and Tundra's intended product (as well as more mature-themed comics in general) being of a broadly similar demographic, Eastman recognised from the start that "most of the audience who read Heavy Metal buy it off the newsstands; they're not going into comic book stores," and stated early on that his intention was to produce "numerous crossovers from the cutting edge of comics creators" to expose the magazine's readership not just to the comics industry, "but anything from the visual media that can cross over."

Eastman also attempted to bring some European hardcover comics to America, using Heavy Metal to help serialise them and both defray the costs and boost readership. Initial interest, however, was "fairly cool."