Tag Archives: Heavy Metal

Thanks, Mike!

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The animated film Heavy Metal premiered in the United States and Canada on August 7, 1981, making it 45 years young this month.

As any Gen Xer can vouch, HM and the magazine that went along with it were transformative.

Besides perhaps the Harry Canyon segment, the most affective, at least to me, was the B-17 Pacific Pearl segment, and we wouldn’t have had it without illustrator Michael G. Ploog— who knew guns and militaria firsthand.

Ploog, born in Mankato, Minnesota during WWII, signed up with the Marines in 1958 and remained on active duty for ten years, working on the Corps’ Leatherneck Magazine, among others.

Working for Filmation and Hanna-Barbera, he did side work for  Will Eisner on the Army’s PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly, guide.

A typical spread from Will Eisner’s U.S. Army publication PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly #224 (c. 1971), with art attributed to Ploog.

Of course, Mike went on to work with Marvel (Man-Thing, Ghost Rider, Werewolf By Night, et al), DC (The Spirit), Dark Horse (The Goon), and clocked in on the amazing 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, and so on.

He is still around and deserves to be honored in the likes of Frazetta, Wrightson, and Moebius.

Combat Gallery Sunday: April 26, 2020, Juan Giménez

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Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: April 26, 2020, Juan Giménez

Juan Giménez was born 26 November 1943 in Mendoza, Argentina, and attended the National University of Cuyo’s School of Arts and Design followed by the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona.

First published at age 16, for the next six decades he would be a wildly influential graphic illustrator who works appeared in French Métal Hurlant and the Italian L’Eternauta magazines, and, of course, Heavy Metal here in the states.

If you were like me and repeatedly watched the now-classic 1981 film of the same name, Giménez had a hand in the segment with the tough hot-dog eating, Hawaiian-shirt clad New York cabbie, Harry Canyon.

Man, that glovebox, though.

Giménez would then go on to work on the military sci-fi series, Basura, The Fourth Power, and The Metabarons.

In addition to his tough futuristic worlds, his call back to WWII with his Pik As (Ace of Pike) series and others is particularly memorable.

Giménez passed away earlier this month at age 76 from complications of COVID-19. 

Thank you for your work, sir.