Althought Kevin Eastman sold his interest in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 2007, it’s not surprising that Heavy Metal ran an ad for the 25th anniversary of the franchise. It’s still his, in many ways.

(Heavy Metal Summer Special, Summer 2009 – Page 3 TMNT 25th Anniversary Celebration ad)

The artist has made a number of pieces about Drizzt Do’urden from The Forgotten Realms, for Wizards of the Coast. This one is fantastic.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 118 Artist Studio on Walpole)

As with most stories by Ozkan, this is pretty self-explanatory.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 94 Caveman by Ozkan)

I’ve been tracking the way that this publication edits advertisments for a long time. This change is novel: putting stars over the nipples of the naked women. In my opinion, it’s much more obvious than simply blurring out the offensive bits (which has also been done lately).

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 93 Last Gasp ad)

This story is ultimately very slight, but the artwork is intersesting – not necessarily great, but interesting.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 92 Living City by Todorovski)

This is a great ending to an interesting story. The larger story riffs on a historical tale about a woman who destroys a town by rounding up the birds and setting them on fire before releasing them back into the town. The main character in the story uses that strategy to great effect. This page talks about how that ending turns into a legend about this fantastic person and the actual ending of the same legendary person. It’s a great ending and the art is equal strong.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 85 Fire Singer by Frenz, Ferreira, and Bommer)

This story is about a pair of prisoners who are being transported across a wasteland. When the male prisoner attempts to assault the female prisoner, he is set free and told to run, which brings us to this page.

I find this storyline interesting because it’s one of the few times that I can remember Heavy Metal running a story that is actively anti-assault. On those rare occasions where assault is condemned, it’s usually after the assault has occured and the condemnation is more token and verbal than anything else.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 77 Run Away by Belli, Parma, and Celestini)

This story is about a fighter who is brought in to fight a naked woman, who turns out to be a vampire. It’s a weird story, but this page is interesting. I especially liked the panel where the woman brings him down, turning the word WHAM into panel borders.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 71 Prized Fight by Richlen and Richlen)

This page is basically just making jokes about vampires, which could also be read as jokes about goths if you took the comments out of context.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 35 Requiem #7 by Mills, Ledroit, and Nickel)

Betty Page is an interesting figure, for a number of reasons. I was not aware that she had completely fallen off the pop culture radar for so many decades or that she was brought back by Dave Stewart.

(Heavy Metal #241, May 2009 – Page 19 Dossier by Ringgenberg)