One of the major changes that new editor Ted White introduced with this issue is a series of columns by various pop-culture critics – a music critic, an underground cartoonist, a sci-fi critic who used to run a SF bookstore in DC and a movie critic. And Mr. White even threw in a review column of his own. The motivation was, perhaps, to provide more stuff for Heavy Metal readers to consume after they’d flipped through all of the visual material that they presumably picked up the magazine for in the first place.

The movie article featured production information about Kubrick’s The Shining and even included an interview with Stephen King. The underground comix article was fantastic, with a potted history of the undergrounds alongside a list of where you could buy some of the stuff that was still being published at the time. The SF article covered Joan Vinge, Samuel Delaney and Phillip Jose Farmer.

The music review was written by Lou Stathis (who later went on to become an editor for DC Comic’s Vertigo line), doing his best to channel Lester Bangs. He starts out the first issue of the new decade with the proclamation that all the music from the 70s was boring except Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols, then goes on to admit that Brian Eno was the real talent behind Roxy. While I agree with this assessment, I can only imagine how this would have gone down among the Heavy Metal readers of the time. These are people who would buy the magazine and come home to sit on the beanbag chair, take a bong hit, put on Physical Graffiti and be magically transported by the beautiful artwork. Led Zeppelin isn’t even mentioned in the article, even in the “oh yeah, these other bands are decent” paragraph at the end. I’m really looking forward to seeing what the responses are to this column in particular.

(Heavy Metal issue #34, January 1980 – Pages 6&7 new columns)