Metal Hurlant: The Monster Within - Paperback

by Jean Giraud (Author), Jean-Pierre Dionnet (Author), Enki Bilal (Author)

THE ORIGINAL GRAPHIC ANTHOLOGY THAT ROCKED THE WORLD OF SCIENCE FICTION AND COMICS IS NOW BACK IN PRINT WITH A MONSTROUS THIRD ISSUE.

Go ahead. Let out your inner monster. We're all friends here.

What makes a monster? Is it a strange and horrific physiology? A cruel and vicious disposition? A malevolent and otherworldly air? Perhaps the answers lie under your bed. In the deep, dark woods. Behind your eyes. Monsters lurk everywhere, and you will find them aplenty--from the deceptively adorable to the mind-breakingly incomprehensible, from the fantastical to the all-too-real--within this installment of Humanoids' celebrated genre anthology, Metal Hurlant.

Inside this 272-page monster of a tome: an interview with writer/director/producer Brian Yuzna (Society, Bride of Re-Animator, Return of the Living Dead 3), a study of Noël Carroll's taxonomy of monsters, a brief walk through the enduring legacy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and 25 tales of magnificent monstrosity from these terrifyingly talented comics creators:

ALESSANDRO SAIU, BROUETTE HURLANTE, CECYLE BAY, CORBEYRAN, DERF BACKDERF, ELENE USDIN, ELIE HUAULT, ENKI BILAL, GWENDAL BRIEC, JEAN-CLAUDE MÉZIÈRES, JEAN-PIERRE DIONNET, JIM BISHOP, JORG DE VOS, JUREK MALOTTKE, KELECK, KOREN SHADMI, MARC CARO, MATTHEW ALLISON, MICHAEL HALMOS, MIRAN KIM, MOEBIUS, NEYEF, NICOLAS BÈGUE, NICOLE CLAVELOUX, RURIK SALLÉ, RYAN HESHKA, SALVADOR SANZ, STEPHANE LEVALLOIS, TIM ADAM, VINCENT BONAVOGLIA

Author Biography

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (French: [?i?o]; 8 May 1938 - 10 March 2012) was a French artist, cartoonist, and writer who worked in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées (BD) tradition. Giraud garnered worldwide acclaim predominantly under the pseudonym Moebius (/'mo?bi?s/;[1] French: [møbjys]) for his fantasy/science-fiction work, and to a slightly lesser extent as Gir (French: [?i?]), which he used for the Blueberry series and his other Western-themed work. Esteemed by Federico Fellini, Stan Lee, and Hayao Miyazaki, among others, [2] he has been described as the most influential bande dessinée artist after Hergé.[3]

His most famous body of work as Gir concerns the Blueberry series, created with writer Jean-Michel Charlier, featuring one of the first antiheroes in Western comics, and which is particularly valued in continental Europe. As Moebius, he achieved worldwide renown (in this case in the English-speaking nations and Japan, as well - where his work as Gir had not done well), by creating a wide range of science-fiction and fantasy comics in a highly imaginative, surreal, almost abstract style. These works include Arzach and the Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius. He also collaborated with avant garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky for an unproduced adaptation of Dune and the comic-book series The Incal.

Moebius also contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science-fiction and fantasy films, such as Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element, and The Abyss. Blueberry was adapted for the screen in 2004 by French director Jan Kounen

Jean-Pierre Dionnet is a French comics writer. He was born in Paris on November 25th, 1947, at a time when there was still rationing in the capital, so he spent the first five years of his life in central France. He fell behind in school and focused solely on his goal of working in comics. While pursuing his dream of becoming a scriptwriter, he worked as a broker on the weekend, and he was also a bookstore clerk at the first rendition of Futuropolis. Jean-Pierre Dionnet started his career as a comics writer in Pilote in 1971. His first comics work was writing short stories for such artists as Jacques Tardi and Jean Solé. In 1974, he wrote Tiriel for Raymond Poïvet and joined the editorial team of L'Écho des Savanes, where he continued to write on the side. A year later, he founded the magazine Métal Hurlant, along with Bernard Farkas, Philippe Druillet, and Moebius. He remained editor-in-chief of the magazine until 1985. Alongside his editorial activities, Dionnet remained active as a scriptwriter, creating stories for Jean-Claude Gal (Les Armées du Conquérant, Arn) and Enki Bilal (Exterminateur 17). Jean-Pierre Dionnet has also been active in the television world, though at the age of 60 he decided to leave the industry to devote himself once more to scriptwriting. His ensuing work includes a sweeping series about the history of America between 1929 and 2147, in a parallel world where the gods live alongside humans: Des Dieux et des hommes (Dargaud; Of Gods and Men, Europe Comics), in collaboration with Laurent Theureau, Roberto Baldazzini, and Moebius.

Enki Bilal is French-Yugoslavian comic book writer and artist, best known for The Carnival of Immortals, whose success would result in two sequels, The Woman Trap in 1986 and Equator Cold in 1993. He also wrote and drew The Monster's Tetralogy in 1998. Working primarily as a graphic artist and illustrator, Bilal has also directed three movies, Bunker Palace Hotel in 1989, Tykho Moon in 1997, and Immortal in 2004, the latter based on his earlier Nikopol Trilogy. Bilal was named Officier des Arts et des Lettres in 2003, and was invested with a knighthood in the Ordre National du Mérite in 2010. An asteroid was named after him in 2006.