Heavy Metal Magazine #201905

If you’re a Heavy Metal magazine reader, you have a taste for the darkness — the best stories never have happy endings, and that’s ok. In this issue, we’re plunging into the darkness once again, plunging far into and through it — we’re going beyond the darkness. It’s the Beyond The Darkness Special. Won’t you come along?

Heavy Metal 293: Beyond The Darkness Special in the Heavy Metal Shop:

• Cover A by FLAVIO GRECO PAGLIA
• Cover B by BEEPLE
• Cover C by WANJIN GIM
• Cover D by ANTONIO J. MANZANEDO

Let’s start with the elephant in the room, that master of darkness you all know and love, Mr. Stephen King. YES — Stephen King returns to the pages of Heavy Metal 38 years after we published his story “The Blue Air Compressor” in 1981. This time around, it’s his story “Little Green God of Agony,” adapted and illustrated by Dennis Calero. A physically broken, very rich man lies in a high-tech hospital bed. Why can’t he get better — is it his entitled attitude, or, hmm, maybe, a small, evil god?

That’s dark. Care to go darker? How about two stories that mirror each other, slightly, two tales of futuristic loneliness. In Timothy Bacon’s “S.O.L.U.S.” we get to know the last survivor on a barren Earth, a caretaker of sorts. The character at the center of in Manuel Montesinos’ “The Guest” inhabits a vessel drifting through space — is she the last human alive? She doesn’t know. Space madness — it’s a thing.

What is existence like for devils and demons, those who live beyond the darkness? It’s no circle of life, that’s for sure — “Doppeldamons” (by Pedrazzoli, Pinto and Percio) and “Mother Death” (by Rios and Leal) both tell stories of the circle of death.

“Holy Wars… The Punishment Due” by Tim Seeley and Ignacio Calero (excerpted from Megadeth: Death By Design) explores our dark need for overlords, corporate or otherwise, while the hungry space explorer of Pahek’s “Green Grower From Rigbadal” finds he’s landed on one of those eat-or-be-eaten planets. “White Death,” by Diego Agrimbau and Eduardo Risso, is a tale of voodoo, colonialism, and revolt.

Contents

• S.O.L.U.S. By Tomithy E. Bacon
• DOPPELDAMONS by Emilia Pedrazzoli, Emiliano Pinto and Facundo Percio
• THE DOOR (CHAPTER 5) by Michael Moreci and Esau Escorza
• GALLERY - John Kenn Mortensen
• MOTHER DEATH by Homer’s Rios and Naphtali Leal
• LITTLE GREEN GOD OF AGONY by Stephen King and Dennis Calero
• GALLERY - Flavio Greco Paglia
• THE GUEST by Manuel D. Montesinos
• MEGADETH’s HOLY WARS...PUNISHMENT DUE by Time Seeley and Ignacio Calero with Carlos Cabrera
• GALLERY - Denis Zhbankov
• MURKY WORLD (Chapters 6 & 7) by Richard Corben
• GREEN GROWER FROM RIGBADAL by Z. Pahek
• WHITE DEATH by Diego Agrimbau and Eduardo Risso

List of covers and their creators: