Stories from the Heavy Metal

     The first two comics of Moebius, at least in the series of comics that I read, both contained sudden, unexpected events which made me say "Huh?" or it caused me to share what I witnessed with my friends so they could laugh at the randomness with me. In Arzak, when who I assume to be the repairman is approaching what I assume to be a communications tower, I initially found it odd that he was being approached by many naked people as he was walking through the sand. Then, suddenly, this naked man appears and delivers the ancient hidden art: the contact break kick to the poor repairman, all while his junk was just hangin' out in the air. I laughed at those two panels in the comic for a good few minutes and showed it to a friend of mine and we both thought it was ridiculously funny. But by the end, when he fixed the cog in the tower which seemed to allow pterodactyl to fly, I was pretty lost. So, I'd like to imagine that this wordless series of images was what the creature was seeing near the light before he was brought back to life.

     The Ballad, however, seemed to feel like it had a specific audience it wanted to target -- considering the girl we follow through the short comic considers the man who wears clothes one who has "forgotten where God is." The author definitely seemed to want to make a statement with this woman who believed in spreading her beliefs to other people, much like many people of today. I'm personally not religious nor do I have anything against people who are, but, again, the sudden turn of events where she finds other people in the desert and is suddenly barraged with bullets I thought I was funny. A poor fate to meet for the poor woman, but it's the spark of some random, short and anticlimactic violence that gets me. Nothing about either of the events left very much of substance to remember, but they definitely served some sort of comedic purpose -- at least within my understanding. I'd be willing to learn whether or not they had some underlying representationalism or if the author simply said, "Eh, why not..." and drew it in the comic.