This page is beautiful. I especially like the background colors and the gradients on the snake.

I am very confused about the story itself, though. It’s marketed as the first YA story in Heavy Metal, which seems like someone doesn’t quite understand how audience demographics work. What’s even stranger is that this story is printed directly after a very sexual story set in a red light district. This page faces the last page of that story.

And I have to wonder how this whole YA thing was meant to work, exactly. Is the YA reader only meant to read these pages and nothing else? Not even the page facing this that has a sexually explicit punchline?

(Heavy Metal #308 2021 – Page 71 Starward by Orlando, Shavrin and Temofonte)