Métal Hurlant no. 1, January 1975. Cover by Mœbius

Picture a French newsstand in January 1975.

Comics were still largely regarded as entertainment for children and teenagers. Science fiction had an even harder time finding cultural legitimacy. France had a long tradition of science fiction, but the genre was still widely treated as a minor form of popular culture rather than literature or art.

Then something new appeared on the rack.

Sixty-eight pages. Mostly black and white. A Mœbius cover. And a title that sounded like the future had suddenly developed a voice:

Métal Hurlant. Screaming Metal.

It wasn't simply another science-fiction magazine. It treated science fiction as a place for artistic experimentation, mixing comics with surrealism, philosophy, horror, sexuality and ideas about technology and the future.

And that was the real provocation.

Métal Hurlant wasn't asking permission for science fiction to be taken seriously. It simply acted as if it already was.

Four Minds. One Radical Idea

The idea began with Jean-Pierre Dionnet, a young critic and writer who had come up through fanzines and the pages of Pilote. By then, Pilote, the magazine where Astérix was born, had become a place where a new generation was pushing French comics forward.

His friend Nikita Mandryka encouraged him to stop talking about it and make it happen. Mandryka was already an important figure in this changing comics scene. Creator of Le Concombre Masqué and co-founder of L'Écho des Savanes, he was known for pushing comics toward absurdity, surreal humor and philosophical play. He also came up with the name: Métal Hurlant.

Dionnet brought in two artists: Jean Giraud, better known as Mœbius, and Philippe Druillet. The fourth was Bernard Farkas, who brought the business sense. In December 1974, the four joined forces as Les Humanoïdes Associés.

But the plan was bigger than one magazine.

They wanted a place of their own, where they could decide what got made and how it reached readers. Their first program was already ambitious: a quarterly science-fiction magazine, a reissue of Mœbius's Le Bandard fou and, in their own words, “préparer plein d'autres choses” (to prepare plenty of other things).

The founders of Les Humanoïdes Associés, 1975. From left: Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Philippe Druillet and Mœbius

Métal Hurlant no. 1

The first issue landed in January 1975, with a cover by Mœbius and the interior designed by Étienne Robial. Inside, the founders put their own work on the line. Mœbius brought Arzach, a wordless tale of a silent rider crossing a dreamlike desert on a pterodactyl-like mount. Druillet brought Gaïl, a dark, hallucinatory fantasy following a warrior through a violent and surreal world.

Métal Hurlant no. 1, January 1975

Arzach by Mœbius, first published in Métal Hurlant

Gaïl by Philippe Druillet, from the Lone Sloane saga

They also looked outward. American artist Richard Corben was invited into the pages, while a promising newcomer, Jean-Claude Gal, got his chance with Les Armées du conquérant, written by Dionnet himself.

That mix would define Métal Hurlant: established masters, unknown talent and foreign voices, all sharing the same pages.

The first print run was 50,000 copies.

Made for Adults

Métal Hurlant carried an adults-only label until January 1978. It earned it.

The stories were violent, erotic, mystical and often all three on the same page. The writing around the comics was just as provocative: reviews of science fiction novels, crime fiction and records, delivered in a counter-cultural voice that read like nothing else on the stands.

For readers raised on tidy adventure strips, it felt like someone had kicked open a door to another dimension and invited them inside.

The Noise Gets Louder

Readers answered fast. The quarterly became bimonthly with issue 7, then monthly with issue 9.

In 1976, Philippe Manœuvre arrived from the rock magazine Rock & Folk and brought music into the mix. He wasn't a comics specialist, but alongside Dionnet he helped push the magazine into new territory. The magazine began to feel less like a publication and more like a scene.

Dionnet kept recruiting widely, bringing in established names such as Enki Bilal, Caza and Jacques Tardi, promising young French artists such as Serge Clerc and Chantal Montellier, and foreign talent still barely known in France, including Vaughn Bodé and François Schuiten.

Artwork by Caza, Métal Hurlant no. 74, 1982

Les Humanoïdes Associés also launched Ah ! Nana in 1976, a quarterly made by women for women and deeply connected to the feminist movement of the decade. It was regarded as Métal Hurlant's little sibling.

Ah! Nana no. 1, 1976. Published by Les Humanoïdes Associés

Heavy Metal

In 1975, an editor from the American humor magazine National Lampoon came across an issue of Métal Hurlant while in Europe and carried it home. Two years later, in April 1977, the United States had its own version: Heavy Metal.

Heavy Metal no. 1, April 1977. Cover by Jean-Michel Nicollet

For many in North America, that name may be more familiar than Métal Hurlant itself. Heavy Metal became a cultural force in its own right, introducing generations of American readers to the wild, adult-oriented world of European science fiction comics and helping carry that visual language far beyond the pages of a magazine.

What happened next, and how Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal went on to influence comics, film and visual culture, is a story of its own. You can read it in our earlier post The Illustrated Underground: The Legacy of Métal Hurlant.

Why It Still Matters to Us

Our founders grew up on these pages. What Les Humanoïdes Associés built was more than a publishing house. It was a way of working: keep creative control close to the people making the work, build your own path and give artists room to push further.

We recognize that same spirit in Métal Hurlant: artists given the freedom to create on their own terms, without having to fit neatly into someone else's idea of what comics should be. It is a philosophy that still guides us today. Every House of Gog original art statue is made in our own workshop, with artists like Pascal Blanché, Skinner and Brent Ashe involved from the first concept to the final paint.

Half a century on, the noise has not stopped.

Moonstone by Pascal Blanché, the first House of Gog original art statue

---

Métal Hurlant is published by Les Humanoïdes Associés. Follow them on Instagram, Facebook and at humano.com.

Follow @houseofgog on Instagram, Facebook, X, Tik Tok & YouTube

BE ONE OF US - Subscribe to our newsletter HERE

Love ya,

Selina
House of Gog | Community Dev.
"Always the illest for the illests"