The classic French comics magazine Métal Hurlant was originally published between 1975 and 1987 and not only spawned an enduring American counterpart (Heavy Metal) but influenced a multitude of classic sci-fi films including Alien, Blade Runner, Star Wars and Mad Max (I wrote more about it’s lasting impact here). Unfortunately, for English speaking fans with tight budgets and terrible foreign language skills, translations of Métal Hurlant’s comic strips have become very hard to find.
Here, then, you’ll find a list of classic Métal Hurlant strips currently available in English. Although the prices are displayed in US Dollars, the links will take you to your local Amazon store where they’ll be priced in your local currency (as an Amazon affiliate, if you make a purchase via this page I may earn a small affiliate commission, for which I’ll be eternally grateful!).
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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 this No products found.
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Alternatively, if you really want to splurge (or you know someone who’s feeling generous), there’s also No products found.
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Or for the digitally-inclined, here’s the Kindle-friendly editions of the original six volumes:
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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 No products found. and No products found., 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 No products found. (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 (No products found.) Johns, Kurt (No products found.) Busiek, David (No products found.) Lloyd and Ryan (No products found.) 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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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 No products found. 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That’s it for now. I’ll regularly update this post as new titles become available, but in the meantime please let me know in the comment section below if there’s anything I’ve overlooked.
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