The protagonist awakens to find himself transformed into a muscular giant in a strange, savage world full of dragons, manbeasts and women of ample proportions… English-speaking comic fans were also becoming increasingly aware of Métal Hurlant. Even those lacking French language fluency were still quite happy to savour the eye-popping artwork, although the nudity probably helped. The publishers of American satire magazine National Lampoon saw a potential for exploiting this new adult comics market and, in 1977, published Heavy Metal magazine, which – during its early years, at least – devoted itself almost exclusively to translated reprints from Métal Hurlant. Still published to this day, with Glaswegian A-list comics writer Grant Morrison as its recently appointed Editor-in-Chief, No products found.. Heavy Metal magazine became a Stateside hit, and even spawned an animated film in 1981. Before long, other American comic publishers wanted a piece of this adult comic action. In an interview with the website Comic Book Resources, former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter recalled an incident from the 1970s: ‘Before the publication of Heavy Metal, [Les Humanoïdes Associés] came to Marvel seeking an American publisher. After they did their presentation, we had a talk and [Stan Lee] thought that the stuff was too violent, too sexy and that good ol’ sanitized Marvel couldn’t do that.’ Heavy Metal’s success was enough to encourage a change of policy, however. In 1980 Marvel launched Epic Illustrated, which – whilst toning down the sexual and satirical content to broaden its appeal – was published in a similar format to the illustrious French original. Uneven but occasionally brilliant, it featured stunning work from the likes of Frank Frazetta and Hurlant regular Richard Corben. Ironically enough, in the late-1980s Stan Lee collaborated with Moebius on a Silver Surfer comic , and Marvel’s Epic imprint released a series of Moebius graphic novels featuring the same Métal Hurlant material that he’d previously felt was a bit too much for his ‘True Believers’. Métal Hurlant’s impact on comics:

Loading... Epic Illustrated In 1981, Marvel Comics got on the adult comic bandwagon with Epic Illustrated

Heavy Metal Long-running fantasy magazine Heavy Metal was an attempt at replicating the Métal Hurlant formula for an American market

Pilote The success of Métal Hurlant meant that even traditional Franco-Belgian comics like Pilote started aiming at a more mature audience

A Suivre Métal Hurlant's success paved the way for other Franco-Belgian adult comics. One of the best of these was A Suivre.

Sadly, the irony didn’t stop there. Back in France things weren’t going well for Métal Hurlant. The magazine was no stranger to financial difficulties (hardly surprising given the fact it was originally set up by three visionary iconoclasts and a token businessman), but by the mid-1980s sales sharply declined as rival publications pandered to the lowest common denominator, sacrificing Hurlant’s artistic experimentation in favour of an airbrushed excess of swords and sauciness. In 1985, publishers Hachette acquired the title and Dionnet was promptly replaced as editor. A year later it changed hands again, but by this time, the magazine was a pale imitation of its former self. In August 1987 – just as headlines about comics growing up started appearing in the British and American press – Métal Hurlant folded. The magazine was briefly revived in 2002 as Franco-US co-production, and more recently some of its stories were adapted into a TV anthology series entitled Métal Hurlant Chronicles. During its original twelve year run, Métal Hurlant did more than any other publication to promote comics as a legitimate artform. It not only left us with a formidable back catalogue of timeless material, but it became a template for all subsequent attempts at ‘serious’ comics, encouraged writers and artists to aim higher and strive for artistic originality, and even pioneered the system of releasing collected volumes of comic strips that we take for granted today. That’s impressive enough, but Métal Hurlant’s influence doesn’t end there… A private eye and his beautiful client make love. The phone rings. It’s a robocop, and it knows who the Arcturian spy is: “It’s the girl!” Suddenly, she changes… When Métal Hurlant first appeared in 1975, it must have seemed like a crazy idea. Here was an expensively-produced science fiction magazine coming out at a time when science fiction was anything but fashionable. Nowhere was this more evident than at the local cinema, and while the early-70s produced an occasional genre movie classic like Silent Running (1972), most sci-fi films of the period were dour, dystopian, low budget affairs. This was the era of the New Hollywood directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, filmmakers more interested in gritty realism than spaceships and bug-eyed monsters. Métal Hurlant had arrived at a time when mainstream cinema was more interested in the gutter than the stars. All that changed in 1977. Star Wars was a global sensation that made sci-fi a permanent fixture at the box office. To audiences of the time, this epic space fantasy with its state-of-the-art visual effects looked like nothing they’d ever seen before. To readers of Métal Hurlant, however, it all looked a bit familiar. The cluttered, lived-in backdrop of this galaxy far, far away might have looked like it was a dozen parsecs away from the clean, white plastic-panelled corridors of previous sci-fi movies, but this grungy aesthetic was commonplace in the pages of Métal Hurlant. Darth Vader and the Empire, with its penchant for enormous, visually impressive yet somewhat impractical weaponry, evoked the works of Philippe Druillet, while farmboy hero Luke Skywalker’s inhospitable desert homeworld, Tatooine – with its junkshop tech and strange skeletal creatures half-buried in the sand – looked like an Airtight Garage strip by Moebius brought to life. Métal Hurlant and Star Wars Never Ending Fight Against the Darkness by Enki Bilal

From Star Wars Visions (Acme Archives, 2010)

Star Wars poster by Phillipe Druillet (1977)

Commissioned by George Lucas

Lone Sloane by Phillipe Druillet (1972)

Han Solo's personal shopper?

Star Wars by Moebius

From Star Wars Visions (Acme Archives, 2010) Director George Lucas made no secret of the connections between Star Wars and Métal Hurlant. He namechecked both Druillet and Moebius in a 1979 interview, wrote introductions to collections of their comic art, and even hired Moebius as a conceptual artist for his late-80s fantasy film, Willow. In fact, a background detail from Moebius’s The Long Tomorrow would later appear as the Imperial Probe Droid in the Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. To be fair, Métal Hurlant was just one of a multitude of sources that influenced George Lucas, and it wasn’t even the only Franco-Belgian comic: the Valérian saga by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières (1967-2010) contains many sequences that bear an uncannily similarity to iconic scenes that would later appear in Star Wars films. By opening the door to big budget science fiction blockbusters, however, Star Wars paved the way for other filmmakers to channel the Métal Hurlant influence even more directly. The Mad Max films of Australian director George Miller – including last year’s Fury Road – all owe a huge debt to Métal Hurlant strips like Druillet’s Salammbô and Jeremiah by Hermann Huppen. The original Mad Max logo even appears to be a homage to the magazine, right down to its dual lightning bolt backdrop.

Loading... Mad Max and Arzach Mad Max 2: the Road Warrior and Moebius's Arzach. Notice the identical winged skull emblem...

Ridley Scott – director of two of the most influential science fiction films of all time, Alien and Blade Runner – was quite open about the debt he owed the magazine. In an interview published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Alien, he said: ‘In 1977, I came across the comics and publications born out of the Métal Hurlant magazines. In the same year, I was offered Alien, and I recognised the […] influences I could apply to the visual aspects of the film.’ Scott hired Moebius and fellow artists H.R. Giger and Chris Foss (who had both been profiled in Métal Hurlant) to work as conceptual artists on the film, and the Giger-designed alien ‘xenomorph’ remains one of cinema’s most disturbing creations. For Blade Runner, the director turned to Moebius’s aforementioned The Long Tomorrow story and the works of Hurlant regular Enki Bilal to inform his seminal vision of a future Los Angeles. More recently, Scott revisited The Long Tomorrow and other Moebius stories as visual inspiration for his Alien prequel, Prometheus. Slideshow: Métal Hurlant impact on Movies

Loading... Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Arzach (1976)

The Night (1976) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Mad Max and Metal Hurlant Two logos separated at birth?

The Long Tomorrow (1976) and Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The Long Tomorrow (1976) and Blade Runner (1982)

The Long Tomorrow (1976)

And it wasn’t just Hollywood. In Japan, the artist and filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo cited Métal Hurlant as an influence on his classic manga and anime film, Akira, while Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki took inspiration from Moebius’s Arzach when creating his classic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). Moebius and Miyazaki became close friends and mutual influences: Moebius named his daughter Nausicaä, and in 2005 the artists’ work appeared together in a joint exhibition in Paris. A decade after it originally ceased publication, the magazine’s legacy returned home. Luc Besson’s 1997 French sci-fi film The Fifth Element may have divided critics, but no one could deny it was bold, visually unique, and one of cinema’s weirdest summer blockbusters. It was also Besson’s love letter to the Métal Hurlant school of comics. Based on a story he started writing at the age of sixteen ( in 1975, the year the magazine was launched), it featured production designs by Hurlant alumni Moebius and Jean-Claude Mézières, and remains one of the most expensive works of fan fiction ever made. More recently, Besson returned to the world of French sci-fi comics with Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, his big budget adaptation of the classic Star Wars-influencing series by Mézières and Pierre Christin.