Hello everyone. Before we turn the corner into 1984, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to all the new people and wave to the people in the back that have been here for a while (Hi Rafe!).

My name is RM Rhodes. A little over three years ago, my father gave me his Heavy Metal collection because I asked him to; I wanted to reread it. He was a subscriber from very early on and even went to the trouble of putting them all in official archival binders, which now sit on a shelf in my library.

It’s taken me most of that three years’ time to get through eighty-some-odd issues, almost a third of the entire run of Heavy Metal. When I first started my reread, I saw it as an opportunity to get reacquainted with a very prominent portion of comics publishing from back in the day. It was also interesting to note how I could almost read portions of my family’s history, as reflected in the magazines themselves; a lot of the issues still have the brown paper wrapper that they were mailed in.

The scope of the project has changed somewhat since I began. 

For example, My father died in July of last year and, as I write this, the first Father’s Day after his death has come and gone. Continuing to reread his magazines has been an exceedingly strange way to maintain a connection with him since his death. If I’d gotten the collection after he died, I don’t know that I would have started this project at all.

My original intention was to just re-read and present material from the first nine years of publication – through the end of 1985. Most of the reasons for this were practical – I didn’t have a complete run of the magazine, just those nine years. As of Wednesday, my run goes from 1977 to 2012 in the regular issues, but I have significant gaps among the special issues. Thanks to the magic of eBay, I can fill in the remaining gaps as I go.

All of the magazines published after 1985 are perfect-bound, not saddle-bound, which makes scanning much more of a pain in the ass if I want to maintain the condition of the magazines. You can see the difference in quality in the pages that just ran from Even Heavier Metal, which was perfect-bound. (I don’t know that publishers think about whether a magazine can be scanned when they consider binding options, but they really should.)

At least one follower has encouraged me to continue past 1985, which was a good idea. Heavy Metal went through some significant changes in 1986 – as did the comics industry in general, which may or may not have been a coincidence – and I’m in a good place to point out the changes.

One of the most obvious changes was the rate of publication – in 1986, Heavy Metal went from a monthly schedule to a quarterly schedule and, in 1989, to a bimonthly schedule. In 1993, right around the time that Kevin Eastman bought the magazine, it shifted to publication eight times a year. And, in 1999, it went to nine times a year. You can see why I thought 1985 made a very obvious break point.

TL;DR version: I’m going to keep reading until I get caught up with current publication, which could take another six or seven years at this rate.

Okay, enough about me. 1984 starts tomorrow.