And in conclusion

Let's go back to the Outland movie before moving on…

The point of this particular part of the story one guesses is to "destroy" our hero, to put him through an ordeal that challenges his entire state of mind, that leaves him with no reason to continue his quest, in short to make him a true hero he has to loose everything dear to him

But even the movie fails to make that very clear, it's missing some scenes that could have established the family and the difficulties they was having on io, yet another one of a seemingly endless tour of inhospitable places - it wouldn't have taken much extra

So is it fair to wonder why such things are missing from the comic adaptation?

Well, let's take a step back and see everything that has been highlighted as setting the scene in the art and see what out of that is unique within these pages..

It definitely cant be use the of shadow, one could not really say that this was being used to set a mood, without immediately wondering precisely what mood or message is trying to be conveyed in every other page, equally soaked in shadow

It cant be the focus on unimportant things (the apartment) and lack of focus on what is supposed to be the focus (the tiny figure of O'neil) as there has already been inexplicable focus of pipes fixtures and fittings before this double pager..

It cant even be that o-neil is tiny, as elsewhere figures are disproportionate in relation to their actual importance

I think this double spread really probably tells you all you need to know about whats going on in the comic, basically that each double spread will be a abstract study on a particular part of the movie, drawn in a bold and evocative way, but with little actual substance underneath it, particular if it gets in the way of the stylistic depection

until the whole thing becomes almost an abstract study of art that is just kind of related to the movie itself

Is this comics? Only by including the smaller panels actually showing any sequential movement does the art actually hang onto this category, albeit with an uneven sense of time, with a second stretched out, and minutes compressed down depending on where you look

the whole adaptation basically ending up as bold statement, this is Steranko, like or leave it -- I can't get enough of this personally..

so here we go with the pages together..

A nice place to wrap up the year -as this concludes the first episode of Outland as published in Heavy Metal

Of course I will be carrying in the New year or possibly even before then, but just in case ..

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year and a special thank you to everyone reading this for doing so, I hope it's been at least marginally entertaining