In the summer of 2011, I asked my father if I could borrow his Heavy Metal collection so I could reread it. We made some joke about not wanting to wait until he was dead and he ultimately just gave it to me.

The whole collection – from the first issue in 1977 through to 1985 – were in nine official commemorative binders, with some assorted other magazines from 1986 through the early 90s. Those binders were very prominent in our home growing up and they look very cool on my shelf now. It was one of the collections he was most proud of and my father collected a lot of stuff.

My father died in the summer of 2013 and rereading his magazines has been a very subtle way of keeping the connection alive. As this blog moves from 1985 into 1986 with the new format, it also moves out of the nine white commemorative binders and away from my father’s collection into my own.

The 1986 issues also mark the point at which the binding changed. In the early years, the magazines were saddle bound, making them easy to scan because they could lie flat. After that point, they were perfect bound, which makes scanning a lot more problematic, as you will see going forward.

New year, new format, new stories, new binding, less dad. I’m not sure if any of this matters to you, but it means a lot to me.