Heavy Gamma
UPDATE: They are still doing it!!!
Bounding Into Comics brought this one to my attention.
The character of Taarna the Tarakian was first introduced in the movie Heavy Metal (1981). It was an anthology movie whose various stories were stitched together by an evil green ball called, the Loknar. The Loknar’s powers were whatever they needed to be so the stories could happen. Fine. It wasn’t a great film.
In the final segment, the Loknar lands on some random planet and turns the locals into a barbarian zombie hoard. The BZs head off to destroy a city of “philosophers and scientists.” These limp wristed, beardy types naturally have to have someone else do their fighting for them. So, they summon the last descendent of Taarak the Defender (whoever the fuck he was). Taarak is described as a “mysterious warrior”. The mystery is that the producers made up a name and provided no background whatsoever.
Anyway, Taarna the Tarakian, is the descendent.
She gets the call and then spends a LOT of time skinny dipping before putting on some bikini armor and heads off on her flying pterodactyl-chicken to save the city.
Which has long since fallen.
And all of the people have been killed. Having muffed that job she heads off to avenge them and promptly get captured. She is stripped naked again, tortured for a bit, then escapes, and with the aid of her mighty pterodactyl-chicken, commits glorious lightning-filled suicide destroying the Loknar and ending the movie.
Honestly, not a great character. I prefer Den.
In case I haven’t made this clear, I am not invested in this stupid character.
However, she has her fans. So they were all excited when they heard that Heavy Metal was bringing her back. I don’t know why the hell they were excited because Stephanie Phillips was going to be writing her. Phillips was hired by DC Comics in the last five years which should tell you everything you need to know about her.
Taarna the Tarakian has never worn more than her armored bikini and usually wears a lot less than that. As naturally as a pterodactyl-chicken gets shot down by a barbarian-zombie, Taarna was provided with full-body modest-ware.
Naturally her longtime fans noticed and objected.
I had heard from a friend that Heavy Metal had been completely turned around by its new management team and was back to being great. Since one them had worked for DC, I had reserved doubts about that. I was right to do so.
The full bore linear gamma male butthurt that erupted out of Heavy Metal’s social media account was all the proof I needed that the magazine was now completely converged and busy driving off its customer base in favor of one that will never show up.
No, she has no reason to suddenly wear full plate armor. There is nothing in the plot that compels her to do so. The Gamma is lying of course.
A few people were foolish enough to mistake the Gamma for an intelligent man capable of reason. And tried to argue with him.
And as naturally as every new Star Wars movie is shit, there came the inevitable middle finger to their customer base.
Heavy Metal is dead. Mourn it no more than you would the Katzenjammer Kids.
It had it’s day but that day is long over. You can’t wish a product of its time back into being anymore than you can make Taarna fans happy by putting her in a burka.
Quit trying to bring back the past and move forward to something new and better.
Okay, I’m done here.
