Heavy Metal Goes Gene Kong


Pepe Moreno has some great graphic novellas to his name and Heavy Metal Magazine is bringing one of them to English for the first time in Gene Kong. Gene Kong will be serialized in two parts in the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine issues 278 and 279. Issue #279 will also have a Special Limited Edition Gene Kong cover by Pepe, which will be available only on HeavyMetal.com

“NYC was a rough town in the 80’s; crime and decay were part of the city’s “charm,” said Moreno, "back when 42nd St. was still 42nd St. and not a street from Disneyworld, back when the later to-become-mayor- Rudolph Giuliani was NY’s us attorney and back in the time when “Bernhard Goetz”, The infamous “subway vigilante” was loose on the streets.”

Set in NYC in the 1980’s, Gene Kong is the tale of Eugene Wong, a biogenetics engineer, whose secret backroom experiments have out him far ahead of his colleagues. Sick of the crime and degenerates who have taken over New York , Gene dreams of the day he can clean up his city. Gene, being of small stature and no fighting skills, decides to take things into his own hands and begins injecting himself with the altered DNA of a gorilla. Nothing seems to be happening until one fateful night on a subway train when Gene is accosted by a bunch of hoodlums, his anger somehow ignites his Frankenstein chemicals into action. Let the underworld of NYC beware!

"We're very excited to bring Pepe Moreno's Gene Kong to the pages of Heavy Metal," explains Heavy Metal Co-CEO Jeff Krelitz, "Pepe was instrumental in bringing the look and feel to the early issues of the magazine and we're glad to have him back."

“We worked closely with Pepe to get the art just right,” explains content editor Frank Forte, “all the scans were from the original artwork and Pepe went in and did minor touch-ups and EFX additions. It really looks stunning.”

Full press release below.
Heavy Metal Magazine to bring Pepe Moreno’s science fiction graphic novella Gene Kong to English for the first time.

Pepe Moreno’s Gene Kong will be serialized in two parts in the pages ofHeavy Metal Magazine issues 278 and 279.  Issue #279 will also have a Special Limited Edition Gene Kong cover by Pepe, which will be available only on HeavyMetal.com

(Northhampton, MA, Dec. 28th, 2015) Heavy Metal Magazine has announced that it will be bringing Pepe Moreno’s graphic novella, Gene Kong, to its pages in two parts in issues #278 and #279.

Set in NYC in the 1980’s, Gene Kong is the tale of Eugene Wong, a biogenetics engineer, whose secret backroom experiments have out him far ahead of his colleagues.  Sick of the crime and degenerates who have taken over New York , Gene dreams of the day he can clean up his city. Gene, being of small stature and no fighting skills, decides to take things into his own hands and begins injecting himself with the altered DNA of a gorilla.  Nothing seems to be happening until one fateful night on a subway train when Gene is accosted by a bunch of hoodlums, his anger somehow ignites his Frankenstein chemicals into action.  Let the underworld of NYC beware!

Pepe Moreno explains, “NYC was a rough town in the 80’s; crime and decay were part of the city’s “charm”, back when 42nd St. was still 42nd St. and not a street from Disneyworld, back when the later to-become-mayor- Rudolph Giuliani was NY’s us attorney and back in the time when “Bernhard Goetz”, The  infamous “subway vigilante” was loose on the streets.”

Pepe was living in the East Village in the 1980’s and would just take a subway ride and his sketchbook if he needed a character for his story.  Many of the background extras and speaking characters are based on real people from his neighborhood.

"We're very excited to bring Pepe Moreno's Gene Kong to the pages of Heavy Metal," explains Heavy Metal Co-CEO Jeff Krelitz, "Pepe was instrumental in bringing the look and feel to the early issues of the magazine and we're glad to have him back."


“We worked closely with Pepe to get the art just right,” explains content editor Frank Forte, “all the scans were from the original artwork and Pepe went in and did minor touch-ups and EFX additions.  It really looks stunning.”

Part 1 of Gene Kong will be in Heavy Metal #278 which ships Dec. 2015 and part 2 will be in Heavy Metal #279 which ships Feb. 2016.

Heavy Metal #279 will also have a special limited edition Gene Kong two-sided cover that will be available exclusively at heavymetal.com in Feb. 2016.

ABOUT HEAVY METAL
World's foremost adult fantasy illustrated magazine.  First published in 1977,Heavy Metal, the Premier Illustrated Fantasy Magazine, explores fantastic and surrealistic worlds, past present and future. It was the first magazine to bring popular European comic artists to the U.S. including Moebius, Phillipe Druillett, Tanino Libertore, Guido Crepax and Pepe Moreno. Illustrators from around the world take you to places you never dreamed existed.  Heavy Metal Magazine is now published six times per year. Most issues feature one serialized graphic novel, several short stories, an artist gallery and artist studio section, a dossier and editorial pages.

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About Pepe Moreno

Pepe Moreno is an accomplished author, artist, designer and entrepreneur with extensive experience in traditional and digital art forms and entertainment media as a whole. He has set trends in the comic book world with his graphic novels and most notably with the first-ever computer generated comic bookBatman: Digital Justice, which would become the second most successful book in the fields history. He was a regular contributor to Heavy Metal Magazine in the 1980’s with the serialized Rebel and many other short science fiction tales including Bunker 6A and Zeppelin.  His dystopian Generation Zero was serialized in Epic Illustrated and later collected by DC Comics. As a pioneer of digital art, Pepe would follow suit at the onset of the video game revolution, originally breaking ground with one of the first ever CD-ROM video gamesHellcab. Pepe went on to create the popular game series Beach Head whose brand of titles sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide and was ranked number one arcade game in the US for three years in a row


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