Heavy Metal is a magazine that clearly defined a genre.

It was the ultimate underground magazine of the 70′s and early 80′s, that combined the dreams of every young heterosexual male in the world into an orgy of science fiction/fantasy/horror  and nudity/erotica/ultra violence. Heavy Metal created an amazing aura that followed it into the debut of its 1981 cult classic animated film, Heavy Metal. Powered by a soundtrack that included Ronnie James Dio, Sammy Hagar, DEVO, Stevie Nicks, Journey and Blue Oyster Cult, as well as the  voice talents of Harold Ramis, John Candy and Eugene Levy, the movie blasted off into fame that continues to this day. Based on the magazine’s successful stories by Moebius and Richard Corbin, the movie combined all that was good about the magazine and stormed into theaters with a cartoon for adults.

Purchased in the 90′s by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle co-creator Kevin Eastman, Heavy Metal began a new era into the world of artists like Simon Bisely, Luis Royo  and B-Movie scream queen Julie Strain. Heavy Metal actually produced a direct to DVD movie Heavy Metal 200o in the year 2000 but it was never able to capture the momentum of the first one.

Since then Heavy Metal has been chugging along and has dabbled into working with some exciting new properties, specifically Nathan Fox and MF Wilson’s Fluorescent Black and Dan Luvisi’s LMS.

Now Heay Metal enters a new age. An age of online comics. Enter: Gates, Hal Hefner‘s science fiction/fantasy and horror epic. It looks to be shaping up as a very unique story with some amazing art, intelligent writing and with a sincere homage to the 1981 movie.

HEAVY METAL MAGAZINE’S FIRST WEB COMIC

Heavy Metal magazine and Hal Hefner, proudly announced the debut of their first online comic on January 1st, 2011. The comic will be available for free and a new page will be released each week, with plans for the comic to run through the end of 2011. A digital and printed format will be available for purchase shortly following the run of the first series. On the website Hefner posted Detailed instructions as to what to expect in terms of a publication schedule, how to use the interface the soundtrack and  more.

The first song on the official soundtrack to Gates was also released on 1.1.11– Gates Theme (Spaced), by ambient rocker LoveKrafty. It a gives readers a moody and atmospheric taste of the negative Utopian world of Gates.

The artist and creator Hal Hefner will be dedicating the soundtrack to late metal God, Ronnie James Dio and the comic itself is dedicated to late fantasy artist Frank Frazetta.

Hefner has created a very warm, personal website that engulfs the reader with character information backstory and personal information about his processes, influences and more. Readers can also post in the site’s forum, comment on the blog posts and mingle and discuss the comic with others and a lot more.

Heavy Metal Presents: Gates centers on a specially-conceived young man, named Gates. He is living a wretched existence in an isolated negative utopian colony, deep within an industrial mountain complex.

When he breaks free from his colony he is thrust onto a strange alien world populated by exotic creatures, and ruled by Soloman—a nightmarish, god-like overlord. With organic plant based technology, Soloman captures the humans and becomes instantly obsessed with the extermination of mankind and all life on the planet. With the help of a tribe of intelligent creatures, Gates must learn to use Soloman’s organic technology  against him and take back a planet which is rightfully his.

Hefner describes Gates as, “an epic tale of discovery and adventure addressing ideas of identity, society, politics, and philosophy, as well as modern concerns, including environmentalism, evolution, and the unintended consequences of scientific and technological experimentation.”

On the official website, fans can get some great information about what is to come with the franchise including character bios, a detailed synopsis, how Hefner’s creative process works, soundtrack information and a lot more.

Heavy Metal seems to have a winner here and so far the comic has been covered by major news outlets like MTV Geek.

In an interview with Sci Fi Babez, Hal Hefner discussed Gates the online comic and mentioned that he has big plans for the project, “Well, the sky is the limit. I have years and years worth of story to tell and I’d love to turn this into everything from video games, to movies,  to animation, to action figures and a whole lot more.”

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