Review: Lemon – Heroes

I have a backlog of great things that’s threatening to collapse my desk, so I’ll get back to talking print more regularly, not least so I can finally archive the buggers and reclaim my workspace.

Let’s start with something lovely.

Lemon (“Pop culture with a twist”) is a fascinating magazine created once a year by the pair behind Gum, Colin Metcalf and Kevin Grady. Always square, with the same dimensions as Avant Garde, their 2008 edition, titled A Clockwork Lemon was all about the work of Stanley Kubrick, and was probably my favourite magazine that year. It was bold and entertaining, with its black monolith foldout and cover varnish inspired by the hotel carpet pattern in The Shining. Geeky, fun and thoughtful content complemented the design.

And so it was with much delight that I received Heroes, aka Lemon issue four.

The theme this time is a little muddled – it’s part Bowie, part, well, heroes themselves. So what we get is an opening third with Bowie-inspired articles and artwork, followed by a more haphazard series of interviews, comics and short features.

On the cover (and the back cover) are Daft Punk, adopting a recurring pose throughout the issue, that of Bowie on the cover of the album Heroes. It’s a great trick – a single repeated pose, unmentioned throughout – and they use it well.

Turn the page and you’re presented with a rather marvellous countdown on a small bound-in section, with lines from Major Tom, until – blast off – the magazine opens with a simple contents page and then a Bowie-style fashion shoot.

There’s much to enjoy – Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore on Bowie, a special piece of art co-created by one of the magazine’s art directors based on a Bowie life mask, lovely pieces by regular contributor “the real JT” Laura Albert and Bill Girouard. The design is clear and unfussy, with a nice Avant Garde/Ziggy crossover headline typeface.

Then the magazine switches to more general “heroes”, albeit ones with Bowie references built-in – interviews with Buzz Aldrin (obvious links to Space Oddity), John Hurt (“our favorite other British chameleon” – ok, that one’s a little shaky) and Daft Punk (pop stars with their own Ziggy Stardust-esque alternate sci-fi personae), followed by a striking futuristic photoshoot with the be-helmeted DJs themselves.

Then comes the now-regular graphic novel section, featuring short interviews with current musicians about Bowie and more, followed by an art section featuring an exclusive image on special card stock by… David Bowie. And suitably strange it is too, thankfully with no comment from the man himself to accompany it (which always spoils a good homage).

After that, the issue tails off somewhat with interviews with/stories about Kim Hoerthoy, Niho Kozuro, Rex Ray and Brian Finke – interesting artists all, but once the Bowie card had been played, anything else was only going to be an anticlimax. Scattered throughout are a handful of well-chosen ads, some specially created for the issue.

As always, Lemon looks gorgeous, and it takes its themes more seriously than most to create lovely magazines. The content is intelligent and mostly engaging.

This time, however, I can’t help but feel that they didn’t choose the right theme. Unlike the Kubrick issue, where The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket more than gave enough material to make a varied issue, the considerations of Bowie deal mostly with his most influential, 70s personae, and seem rather repetitive. And then, when they go off the theme almost entirely with Aldrin and Hurt and the ‘art section’, the content feels a little too loose, forcing the editors to make, almost apologetically, increasingly tenuous links to their purported subject matter.

Lemon – Heroes is well worth picking up for its graphic stylings, intelligent ideas and physically interesting playfulness. It still beats most magazines for originality and design, and is always a publication worth buying. But if you only had enough money for one issue of Lemon, I’d track down A Clockwork Lemon instead.