Gates, the first digital comic from adult sci-fi and fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, deals with totalitarian governments, human-animal hybrids and other horrors.

The weekly comic, which debuts on New Year's Day 2011, centers on disillusioned protagonist Gates, who breaks free from a stultifying industrial utopia beneath a mountain only to find a lush paradise engineered by organic technology. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing were it not for aptly named overlord Soloman, who is determined to exterminate what remains of the human race.

Bizarre creatures abound, as can be seen in the Gates preview images above. Yet the digicomic, which Heavy Metal describes as "the ultimate tale of man vs. nature and nature vs. technology," is an environmentally and politically aware speculative exercise, writer/illustrator Hal Hefner said on his website.

Hefner also called his ecstatic collaboration with Heavy Metal a natural, given his awesome name.

"As I closed the deal," he wrote, "I said to [publisher] Kevin Eastman, 'Ya know I’m destined to be here, working with you. My first name is sci-fi (HAL: like the super computer in Kubrick’s 2001) and my last name is (HEFNER: porn, like Hugh Hefner/Playboy). That’s Heavy Metal, dude.' He laughed and agreed."

Images courtesy Heavy Metal. Follow us on Twitter: @morphizm and @theunderwire.

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