This issue is dated September 2001. However, due to the vagaries of a publishing schedule, this was actually completed 60 to 90 days before it was in stores. Accordingly, the big news is that Heavy Metal has raised the price of the comic yet again. By a whole dollar! But hey, the number of pages goes up again, as well – this time to 128 pages. And the promise of two full graphic novels per special. And a tip-in plate. 

This makes for some deep incongruity, expectations-wise. As an American, I have learned to flinch at the inevitable 9/11 reference and that simply isn’t here. This is just the issue that was on the stands when that happened. In fact, the reaction doesn’t show up until two issues later, in the January 2002 issue, which shows how far ahead the publication schedule was queued up. 

(Heavy Metal issue #195, September 2001 – Page 3 Publishers’s Note/Letters to the Editor)