The heads of the storied counterculture comic magazine Heavy Metal are taking a shotgun approach to regaining their legacy, instead of doing any one thing to bring themselves back into the sci-fi culture spotlight.
During a Thursday New York Comic-Con panel, the storied magazine announced it was looking to create a so-called "Metalverse." The trailer for the live action and animated content was again shown off. Popular old stories like Taarna and Cold Dead War are included in the plan to create movies or shows based on brand and creator owned content.
Tommy Coriale, Heavy Metal's head of studio, talked about what this means for the legacy magazine creators. The Heavy Metal fans were told that they were also taking on a number of animated projects, but they didn't give any details. There will be more announcements later this year.
The top brass for the magazine joined executives for the publisher Whatnot, which that morning announced it was inking a deal to publish nearly a year's worth of issues. It coincides with the magazine announcing it was turning a new leaf. This would end the magazine's first volume run that has been ongoing since 1972, though the classic concurrent issue number would appear inside all upcoming issues.
Whatnot is more known for its trading platform than it is for its collectibles. In July of this year, the company said it was breaking into publishing. The heads of the magazine said that this partnership will allow them to publish more frequently. The deal will make it easier to distribute.
The scattershot approach to recreating its brand recognition includes tying themselves to the Web3 train. People entering the main Heavy Metal website are immediately directed to the Heavy Metal+ site, which promises people can buy web3 collectibles, which are actually just NFTs. The NFTs were part of a partnership. You need a wallet in order to access them. NFTs have seen a decline in trading volume since the most recent crash.
Matthew Medney, CEO of Heavy Metal, said that this content allows users to actually own their content, unlike services like Comixology which only allow users to view the content. There is a significant problem with digital ownership, but NFTs are more like digital receipts of ownership like the deed to a house. It will still affect the owner's ability to view that file if that server ever experiences problems. Coriale said thatemerging technology was something they were deeply invested in and it was not going away.
Grant Morrison, who briefly served as its editor and chief, was one of the most renowned genre creatives of the time. The magazine has lost a lot of its luster due to its inability to innovate or keep pace, as well as other sci-fi fiction appropriating Heavy Metal's counterculture, raunchy, and sexually charged attitude. There has been no hint of rearing its head so far. That may be why executive editor Joseph Illidge talked with a small hint of bitterness about the fact that Love, Death + Robots started as a Heavy Metal movie. The metalverse is important for the elder comic magazine because it needs brand recognition. The Metalverse is not being built in a day. He needed seven.
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