Two interesting things here.

First, the almost offhand admission that Eastman read several years worth of back issues all at once – which means that he’s been detached from issue-to-issue publication for some time now. His columns bear that out – more often than not, they’ve been name-check heavy, without any specific sense of what the issue itself was like. This is, in my considered opinion, indicative of how much Heavy Metal had become a standardized magazine product during this period of publication. One issue was more or less like the next, which is not how it had always been.

Second, Eastman (and editorial staff at large) are looking for reader feedback about what features to retain in the publication. Should they add more columns? Or should they get rid of things like Dossier? Ironically, two of the three printed letters directly contradict each other regarding the value of Dossier et al. (One has a strong suspicion that this was intentional.)

(Heavy Metal issue #194, July 2001 – Page 3 Publishers’s Note/Letters to the Editor)