Pirate Hovercraft Roaming and Reaving On the Post-Apocalyptic Highways

ALTERNATIVE TITLE: "Pirate Hovercraft on the Arizona Highways ."

ARTIST: William Louis ("Bill") McDonald Senior.

COMPANY: Argonaut-GreyWolf.

CLIENT: Me. My purpose was high school bragging rights along with having real Arizona Highway adventures with which to expand my science fiction and horror portfolio.

YEAR: 1975 and 1976.

WEBSITE: www.alienufoart.com/alien-ufo-…

WEBSITE: www.deviantart.com/argonaut-gr…

WEBSITE: argonaut-greywolf.artstation.c…

PROJECT: Repurposing the main fusilage-hull of the lunar SHADOW Moonbase' UFO Interceptor torpedo spacecraft.

MODELS: the SHADO Moonbase UFO Interceptor along with Arizona's buzzards.

MEDIA: Black Higgins India ink, Pentel black felt tip pen, Bic ball points, Rapidograph pens and Pilot fine tip pens.

NOTES: The body and chassis for this commercial garage-built hovercraft by a family of adult desert rat "Shitkickers" was a repurposed fusilage and hull of the Gerry & Sylvia Anderson with Reg Hill SHADO Moonbase UFO Interceptor from their hit TV series "U.F.O." with IPC in the United Kingdom.

In Issues #1 through #3 first published in April 1977, another artist, also utilized the chassis / fusilage of this same spacecraft for a hovercraft blasting its way along long desert highways. As to which artist it was, maybe it was work by Enki Bilal, Philippe Caza, Guido Crepax, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Claude Forest, Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius), Chantal Montellier, or Milo Manara.

As cartoonist/publisher Kevin Eastman saw it, Heavy Metal published European art which had not been previously seen in the United States, as well as demonstrating an underground comix sensibility that nonetheless "wasn't as harsh or extreme as some of the underground comix – but . . . definitely intended for an older readership."

In the mid-1970s, while publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to jump-start the French edition of National Lampoon, he discovered Métal hurlant (which had debuted in 1975). The French title translates literally as "Howling Metal".

Heavy Metal began in the U.S. in April 1977 as a glossy, full-color monthly. Since the color pages had already been shot in France, the budget to reproduce them in the U.S. version was proportionally reduced.

NOTE:

LOCATION: This sketch illustration was completed at the dining room table at my parents' home in Monarch Bay Terrace, Monarch Beach, California.