I have, for the first time in 30+ years, picked up an issue of Heavy Metal, the 1970s babesploitation fantasy magazine that has certainly served to inspire many a ‘Woman of Power’ character in modern film and print. The issue is #265, and is saturated with near porn level babes and swords art, some really strange comic work, and two really dark comics. Generally, the female figures in this art look like a typical American man’s fantasy woman: petite and athletic with artificial C-cup breasts, which always puzzled me as a standard feature of primitive women in fantasy art—like Conan without chest hair.

Then I came to page 24 and encountered the Broken Angel gallery of Mark A. Nelson. The figures and costumes were exotic, sensual and bizarre, but with a realistic edge. The fantastic motifs, symbols and positions really worked for me, because the women were real—or appeared to be based on actual models with bodies that had not been surgically enhanced.

In the sidebar Mark is quoted as being inspired by fiction and nonfiction, including the work of Joseph Campbell—which helped to explain the rampant symbolism and animistic overtones of his work. I am, by no means, an art critic. I was having a hard time understanding how I could be feeling a kinship with the artist, me not being able to draw a straight line and all. Then I read farther down the sidebar and noted his desired effect for his work, to evoke ‘a mood of questions.’

I hope Mark gets tapped to illustrate a cover for a Gene Wolfe reprint. I would love to see his take on The Shadow of The Torturer.

Check Mark out at www.grazingdinosaurpress.com