Den Volume 1: Neverwhere – by Richard Corben

The out-of-print-for-decades fantasy comics masterpiece gets a long overdue English language re-release. A dorky young man is transported to a fantasy world where he finds himself transformed into a fierce warrior with a bald head, a ripped physique, and (in the words of “Young Frankenstein”) an enormous schwanzstucker. Let the neo-puritans dismiss this as a testosterone-charged mashup of pulp hero John Carter and porn star John Holmes; Corben’s luscious, idiosyncratic artwork and unforgettable feats of world-building make this an unforgettable read. As Patton Oswalt describes it in his introduction to this edition, Corben’s Den is “the progrock strip club at the far end of your mind.”

Much like their rather gorgeous Moebius Library collections, Dark Horse Comics have pulled out all the stops with this, sourcing original artwork and re-lettering the strip to ensure that Corben’s masterpiece has never looked better.

Social Fiction by Chantal Montellier

This new collection by comic artist Chantal Montellier contains three long out-of-print Métal Hurlant strips (“1996”, “Wonder City” and “Shelter”) appearing together in English for the first time. A pioneering female cartoonist in a field traditionally dominated by men, Montellier’s work had previously appeared in English in Heavy Metal magazine in the 1970s and 80s, although the translators often took liberties with the source material. For instance, when her “1996” strip first appeared in Métal Hurlant, it was a stark, dystopic sequence of vignettes that effortlessly channeled the nightmare visions of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley through a post-1968 feminist perspective. When translated for Heavy Metal, however, it could sometimes read more like a sleazy ’70s sex comedy with incomprehensible word salad dialog.

This new, elegantly packaged collection from the New York Review of Books remedies that, with a new English translation that captures the author’s original intent. Highly recommended.

The Incal – by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius

While English translations of most of Moebius’s Métal Hurlant masterpieces remain trapped in some nebulous out of print limbo until Dark Horse Comics and his estate tell us otherwise, determined fans can get around this pesky prohibition thanks to a couple of rather handy (ahem) Moebius loopholes. The first involves Humanoids – the US-based offshoot of Métal Hurlant publisher, Les Humanoïdes Associés – who hold the English language rights to all of Moebius’s collaborations with the erstwhile surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. Chief amongst these is The Incal (first serialised in Métal Hurlant in 1980), which tells the story of John DiFool, a dystopia-dwelling “Class R” private eye who gets embroiled in a mind-bending science-fiction saga of breathtaking proportions. The source text for Jodorowsky’s vast, interconnected comics universe (AKA ‘The Jodoverse’), it’s a bona-fide Métal Hurlant classic and a must-read for anyone interested in comics.

The Incal is available in a variety of formats. There’s the standard hardback and paperback editions:

Alternatively, if you really want to splurge (or you know someone who’s feeling generous), there’s also a rather lovely and incredibly huge coffee table edition.

Here’s the digital omnibus collection of the original six volumes:

Metal Hurlant – Selected Works

The original Metal Hurlant was published between 1975 and 1987, but the title was briefly revived in 2002 as a US comic-size Franco-American anthology comic. It serialized Megalex (a characteristically saucy dystopian saga by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fred Beltran) and The Zombies That Ate the World (the popular comedy-horror strip by Jerry Frissen and Guy Davis), and featured entertaining text pieces by Metal Hurlant co-founder Jean-Pierre Dionnet and lots and lots of short stories. These were often twist-in-the-tail pulpy sci-fi yarns not unlike British comic 2000ad’s Future Shocks (mind you, 2000ad itself was influenced by the original Metal Hurlant), but other genres were represented, too, including Horror, Fantasy, Westerns, Boxing Noir and that perennial Eurocomix staple, Weird French Stuff.

Metal Hurlant: Selected Works collects 22 of these short stories, featuring work by Anglo-American comic talent like Geoff Johns, Kurt Busiek, David Lloyd and Ryan Sook. It also features an additional ‘bonus track’ from the French comics artist, Caza, the first English translation of Peace, a short story that first appeared in the original Metal Hurlant magazine in 1981.

Lone Sloan: Gail – by Phillipe Druillet

English language comic strips by Moebius’s Les Humanoïdes Associés co-founder and baroque nightmare universe builder, Phillipe Druillet, have been out of print for years. Thankfully, veteran British graphic novel publishers Titan Books (who made their name releasing 2000ad comic collections back when that was still a far-flung date in the future) have recently come to the rescue with their Eurocomix-leaning Statix Press imprint.

Druillet’s Gail (not to be confused with Coronation Street’s Gail – ask a Brit) was first serialised in early issues of Métal Hurlant and featured Lone Sloane, Druillet’s dimension-hopping antihero. Sloane – a sort of a demented mashup of Han Solo and a sweary Silver Surfer – regularly found himself at odds with cosmic Lovecraftian critters and evil intergalactic empires with a penchant for unfeasibly large and impractical forms of weaponised transport. So, yes, George Lucas was a fan.

In Gail, Sloane finds himself trapped on a prison planet at the mercy of evil aliens ‘made of metal and hate.’ Like much of Druillet’s work, it’s visually audacious, utterly bonkers and – in an ideal world – deserves to be read on a format as big as a king size mattress.

Armies/Arn’s Revenge – by Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Jean-Claude Gal

Conquering Armies was a series of brutal, self-contained, anti-war stories set amongst the lower ranks of a vast, prehistoric army. Written by Métal Hurlant’s Editor in Chief, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and illustrated by Jean-Claude Gal, who’s gorgeous, painstakingly detailed black-and-white artwork anticipated the imaginary environments of HBO’s Game of Thrones. The two men would subsequently collaborated on Arn’s Revenge, a more generic heroic fiction yarn, and both stories have been translated into English in three tastefully-colourised volumes by Humanoids.

Arzach – by Moebius

While Moebius’s timeless yarns about a grumpy warrior on a pterodactyl remain criminally out of print over here, there’s a no-frills lifehack anyone can try: just buy one of the many foreign-language versions instead. As the majority of the visually-stunning strips are dialogue-free, you’ll only need Google Translate if you’re one of those people who insist on reading copyright notices and disclaimers (spoiler – similarities to pterodactyl-riding warriors living or dead is purely coincidental).

Exterminator 17 – by Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Enki Bilal

More musings about war and warriors by Jean-Pierre Dionnet, this time swapping out fantasy prehistory for a science-fiction future. This tale of cybernetic warrior angst featured characteristically moody, atmospheric art by another Eurocomics legend, Enki Bilal, who –along with Moebius – would later go on to influence on the film Blade Runner.

The Eyes of the Cat by Jodorowsky and Moebius

While technically not a Métal Hurlant strip per se, this was originally a Les Humanoïdes Associés giveaway used to promote the magazine so it makes the list. More of an illustrated story book than a comic – albeit a dark, twisted yet hauntingly beautiful one – it was the first published collaboration between Moebius and Jodorowsky, who’d previously worked together on a famously ill-fated movie adaptation of the sci-fi novel, Dune (the documentary film Jodorowsky’s Dune tells the fascinating story of that, and is highly recommended).

It comes in a couple of versions, but I suggest going for The Yellow Edition as that matches the format of the original 70s ashcan release (which had yellowy pages, natch), and it just looks better. Like the aforementioned Incal, it’s published by Humanoids.

Salammbô – by Phillipe Druillet

In 1862, Gustave Flaubert followed up Madam Bovary – his classic study of low-key literary infidelity – with a big, blood-splattered historical epic in which a violent mercenary becomes obsessed with a beautiful priestess and lots of people die. In 1980, Druillet went one step better – transporting the story from ancient Carthage to his own psychedelic sci-fi playground and swapping out the book’s male lead for the aforementioned Lone Sloane. This was long before some tone-deaf Hollywood type coined the horrible term ‘re-imagining’ and is every bit as mad as it sounds.

Freddy Lombard – by Yves Chaland

Yves Chaland was a pioneer of the retro-modern Atom style of illustration who tragically died in a car accident at the age of 33. His Freddy Lombard was a bequiffed, Hergé-inspired hustling adventurer – think TinTin with cashflow issues. Humanoids published a five volume Complete Freddy Lombard, with volumes 2 and 3 containing stories that originally appeared in Métal Hurlant, but more recently have released a rather nice hardback volume that collects the set. They’re great fun and all worth a read.

Young Albert – Yves Chaland

Chaland was a prolific contributor to Métal Hurlant. Young Albert (serialised in between 1981 and 1987) was a bittersweet, semi-autobiographical series of gag strips about a flawed and sometimes unpleasant young man, but the art was so lovely readers were prepared to cut the kid some slack. Humanoids have released an English language translation of Young Albert, in both a super-oversized coffee table book and a more modestly priced regular editions.