Oh boy. On the previous page, the homeless boy is holding a sign that says “Please Buy Me My Next High.” This is used to justify the reactionary language on this page. On the next page, the main character wraps his hand around the dollar’s worth of change and uses it to brutally beat the homeless boy. The beating is played for laughs – each punch is equated with the main character giving the homeless boy a dollar. The story ends with the main character repeating the “gag” with a different homeless person.

This is, by far, the most extreme language and behavior that I’ve seen in this publication to date. Features like this by the same artist have been published by Heavy Metal before this, beautifully drawn ultraviolent vignettes with little internal logic. To be fair, this describes a large majority of the stories published by Heavy Metal. But this one is shocking because of the extremely prejudicial language and the violence that follows suit.

I find it interesting that the main character is drawn as a monkey dressed in human clothes. It’s an affectation that he’s used in all of his stories to date, so it’s not that unusual. My reading of this choice is that the main character being a monkey is a way for the author to distance himself from the actions that the author insert character perpetuates.

Regardless of what anger issues the author was working through at the time, this story reads as a justification for mocking and beating homeless people. And that’s awful.

(Heavy Metal 223, March 2006 – Page 79 Spare Change by Van Dyke)