I just watched Heavy Metal 2000. I liked the first one more, but this one was okay.
What isn't okay is that the magazine apparently went out of business in June of this year. Apparently they went woke, and now they've gone broke.
Yet another part of history is gone thanks to these fuckers. Their crusade against hot babes knows no end.
My issue is they can't do hot women in armour or power armour either. I mean, I'm not ashamed to say the Zone Raiders from C&C 3 and the various Sisters of Battle art made me want to buy a poster...
I'm a firm believer a lot of these businesses were already running out of steam already and tried to go woke to appeal to shit like ESG to stay afloat. The fact that ESG is in trouble itself with it's backers not fully committing to it anymore means you're going to have a lot of these companies going bust this year and certainly next year.
ESG would only work so long as the social engineering of the population works in favor of the agenda. Nobody wants to buy shit inundated with what some bigwig think tanks, completely disconnected from the plebs, think consumers should consume "for the betterment of humanity". The backers can't be this dumb. It's got to be a scam to ruin the economy further while profiting a little because, as you said, "a lot of these businesses were already running out of steam"
ESG is a money laundering operation on the face. Created with the multi-goal of:
ESG, like all other aspects of Marxism, only works (and by "works" I mean people can't escape it) when everyone is forced into it. If it's possible to opt out most people will do that.
That's why Razorfist talks about "go broke, get woke", and others talk about companies rapidly leftifying before they die. How bad was the company before they went woke? We know after the fact that a lot of the other left leaning companies happened in response to financial difficulties.
Just look at the Catholic Church for an example of this. They were going broke, so they've gone woke under Pope Francis to try and stay relevant.
As another user already pointing out referring to Razorfist, that's why it's less "go woke, get broke", and more "go broke, get woke, ultimately croak".
Going woke is their attempt to save money/business. The reality is that it's not demographics and pandering that's the issue. The sad reality that not too many are looking at is that these industries simply aren't viable anymore, certainly not in the way they used to be.
I wish we could go back to the business models of the 90s and early 2000s, but most of these industries have stagnated and those models weren't working. Even the models from the 2010 for publications wasn't sustainable, it was just haemorrhaging less.
These publications and companies are not going to be viable forever. Nor should they be. They've lived too long, and it's time for new content. And I don't mean modernised content, I mean original works that have actual good ideas. These need to be promoted rather than relying on some handfuls of established IPs that are held by a handful of corporations that care nothing for the content and only for the profit.
Markets need to be viable for these companies to survive, otherwise they will keep trying these tactics to get any amount of money possible.
More cultural vandalism. That head-to-toe armor is literally the opposite of the spirit of Heavy Metal. Fuck these people.
Ok. My condolences to your employees, who might have wanted to have fans and jobs.
I liked both 1 and 2 for different reasons. 2 was definitely weaker, but Tyler was just so villainous and awesome. Plus MDFMK Missing Time kicks ass. Anyway, I'm glad the magazine is dead. 25 year run, then they make a change that is widely hated, mock the fans and die 2 years later. It's pretty clear their decision and attitude killed the comic.
I literally cannot imagine a "woke" Heavy Metal.
And to think, it was once the "leftie" mag of note, outside of perhaps Playboy.
What stands out to me is one scene from the print version of _So Beautiful and So Dangerous", where they'd gone through so much shit, the alien Sisyphus (apt name, btw, but who did not appear in the movie) commented that if God exists, then he would like to shove his (God's) teddy bear down his childish throat, lol.
Nowadays that'd be screeched at because he believes in God (but Allah would be fine ...)
Heavy metal never dies.
But seriously, fuck these people.
I'm surprised they lasted this long, woke or not. I'm assuming the magazine went stale long before they went broke and desperately got woke.
What bothers me is that pop culture can be a bit of a monoculture; the clean, colorful, eye-popping but not bad art style on every other notable Steam release. Off the top of my head, there's no full-3D video game that nails that epic post-romantic painted look, although thankfully enough on the periphery. Just look at this Frank Frazetta cover from a similar magazine c. 1980. It still holds up 4 decades later with less than a hint of the 80s/90s flavored corniness in related media (corniness itself not always a bad thing). My point is that I hope this grandiose art movement has a renaissance in movies and games so these objectively good past works don't get memory-holed.
https://rumble.com/v3e0gey-the-rageaholic-go-broke-get-woke-ultimately-croak-a-rant.html
I didn’t realize they went out of business. I remember when they made crazy changes and attacked fans
Regardless of wokeness, making crazy changes and attacking the fans is not generally a good business move. What did they do? Declare there’d be no more women in battle bikinis, and instead of violence, monsters would talk about the societal norms which have oppressed them?
Pretty much. The usual that we have seen. They crapped on their customers and now look what is happening. Similar to the comic book industries.