Category: Look Here

Comics · Here, Read · Look Here · Nicole Claveloux

Look Here, Read: “The Green Hand: The Mauve Sideshow” (part 5 of 5), by Claveloux and Zha

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From Heavy Metal volume 1, number 9 (December 1977) — 33 years ago! — here’s the fifth and final chapter of Claveloux and Zha’s The Green Hand:

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Comics · Here, Read · Look Here · Nicole Claveloux

Look Here, Read: “The Green Hand: Blue Terror” (part 4 of 5), by Claveloux and Zha

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From Heavy Metal volume 1, number 8 (November 1977), here’s the fourth chapter of Claveloux and Zha’s The Green Hand:

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
Comics · Here, Read · Look Here · Nicole Claveloux

Look Here, Read: “The Green Hand: White Night” (part 3 of 5), by Claveloux and Zha

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From Heavy Metal volume 1, number 7 (October 1977), here’s the third chapter of Claveloux and Zha’s The Green Hand:

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]
Connections · Frank Frazetta · Look Here

Connections: Frank Frazetta vs. Neil Vokes

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frank-frazetta_cover_kubla-khan-portfolio
ABOVE: Frank Frazetta, portfolio cover, Frazetta’s Kubla Khan; artwork dated 1977.
neil-vokes_r-rankin_unpublished-cover-primer-n9_1984_12x17in
ABOVE: Neil Vokes (penciller) and R. Rankin (inker), unpublished cover for Primer #9, 12 x 17 inches; artwork dated 1984.

Look at the bridle on Vokes’s version of Frazetta’s horse. Now you tell me: what’s missing from the design that renders it useless as a device one might use to control a real horse? (I see several problems with it.)

Of course, Frazetta’s Kubla Khan on horseback is itself little more than a variation on the longstanding Western theme of the weary Indian warrior on an exhausted horse, a.k.a. End of the Trail, which dates back to the 1915 sculpture by James Earle Fraser.

UPDATE:

In the world of functional bit-bridles, the country bridle and the western split-ear are about as minimalist as it gets:

Notice that the crucial elements in both cases are 1) a strap that attaches to one side of the bit, runs up the cheek of the horse, over the head behind the ears, down the other cheek, and attaches to the other side of the bit, and 2) an ear or brow band to prevent the bridle from sliding either down the neck towards the rider or around the head in a circle, which would pull the bit out of the mouth and onto the cheek. Seeing what a minimalist bridle looks like makes it easy to see what’s wrong with Vokes’s version, which consists of a combination browband/throat latch and an entirely separate noseband, with no cheek pieces or headpiece at all.

Comics · Here, Read · Look Here · Nicole Claveloux

Look Here, Read: “The Green Hand: Night Grass” (part 2 of 5), by Claveloux and Zha

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From Heavy Metal volume 1, number 6 (September 1977), here’s the second installment of Claveloux and Zha’s The Green Hand, which to my knowledge has never been published in a single volume in English:

Comics · Here, Read · Look Here · Nicole Claveloux

Look Here, Read: “The Green Hand” (part 1 of 5), by Claveloux and Zha

RC1 Comment

The graphic album, “La Main Verte,” by Nicole Claveloux and Elisabeth “Zha” Salomon, published in French in 1978 by Humanoids, was also serialized in English in Heavy Metal. The following is the first of five chapters that appeared in Heavy Metal from August to December 1977 (33 years ago!); I’ve also included the cover by Bernie Wrightson, for comparison and contrast fun:

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

The moment when the woman says to the flightless, depressed bird, “Get out of here. I’m going to do something desperate,” and then unexpectedly slides through the wall into the ivy-choked apartment next door, leaving her clothes in shreds on the floor, is not only beautifully realized but also, for me, absolutely unforgettable.

Should I post the rest of the story? You tell me.

UPDATE:

Alberto Breccia · Comics · Here, Read · Look Here

Look Here, Read: “To Draw or Not to Draw” by Alberto Breccia

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From Heavy Metal’s Greatest Hits, volume 8, number 2 (1994), here’s a lushly painted little parable on freedom of expression by a neglected master, Alberto Breccia.

So… all you lovers of freedom, beware the wrath of the frustrated would-be artist… also, all you dictators out there, beware the brutal efficiency of your own brain-dead blackshirts…