This is a very fun story about two guys who compete to become the most famous escape artists in the media landscape. I really like the girl in the second tier that looks like Tank Girl. I also like the hippo in the bottom left corner panel.

(Heavy Metal 221, November 2005 – Page 57 Claus & Simon: Kings of Escape by Acuna and Arcas)

The art here is fun. It looks like it was done using vector art and actually reminds me a lot of the work of JH Williams III, especially his work on Promethea. This page, in particular, is a great example of wordless sequential storytelling. There’s a twist at the end, of course, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

(Heavy Metal 221, November 2005 – Page 27 Driving Home by Proctor and Rother)

The review of the Schuiten and Peeters work from NBM at the top of the page might have been more effective if he’d noted that Francois Schuiten had a slew of material printed in Heavy Metal back in the early 80s. Just spitballing, really.

(Heavy Metal 221, November 2005 – Page 15 Dossier by Ringgenberg)

I honestly think I lost IQ points reading the text in this gallery feature. The use of “females” in the fourth line is pretty bad. But it’s the fact that he refers to nude modeling as a “theme” that really gets me. And then he goes on say that the strong female characters in his pin-up artwork came from his mom? Yikes.

(Heavy Metal 221, November 2005 – Page 10 Gallery on Smith)

This is a pretty good little story. I thought it would be amusing to include the half of the two page spread that gave you the story, but didn’t actually show the image described by the story. For reasons.

(Heavy Metal 221, November 2005 – Page 7 Galactic Geographic by Kofoed)

The second letter here, from Lostboy, is the second letter from the guy who ran HeavyMetalFanPage.com, which is where I got the majority of my information about what was in each issue from the early issues.

(Heavy Metal 221, November 2005 – Page 4 Letters to the Editor)