Style combination · Contrasts
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics × Story Manga
Hayao Miyazaki said he directed Nausicaä under Mœbius's influence; manga stays black and white with screentone, speed lines and fast cinematic cutting, while Métal hurlant slows down into colour tableaux and, in Arzach, tells whole stories without a word.
Mix them and make something Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics Story Manga
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés) Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)
- Type from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Colour from Story Manga
- Form from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Composition from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Surface from Story Manga
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Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics avoids halftone & ben-day dots: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Display · Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
Signal
Bangers; Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics used Pen-lettered balloon capitals and Monumental drawn title lettering
Text · Story Manga
The black-and-white narrative comic of postwar Japan, from Tezuka Osamu's Shin Takarajima (1947) to the weekly boys' magazines of 1959 and 1968 and the paperbacks that collect them. Pages read right to left; panels change size and slant, bleed off the page and are broken by figures, cutting like film. Grey comes from dot screentone; motion and feeling from speed lines, focus lines and a codified set of symbols. Dialogue runs vertically in tall balloons, sound effects are drawn into the picture, and big-eyed, simplified characters act against detailed backgrounds.
Shippori Mincho; Story Manga used Anchi-goshi balloon setting and Fine Mincho balloon setting
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Story Manga, with a counter-accent from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés) Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics)
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#f6f3eaground · 36% -
#141414ink · 14% -
#d32f2faccent · 18% -
#a3243faccent · 14% -
#cfcfcfaccent · 10% -
#e7a487accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f6f3ea;
--ink: #141414;
--accent-1: #d32f2f;
--accent-2: #a3243f;
--accent-3: #cfcfcf;
--accent-4: #e7a487;
--font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}Use it with care
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés): The stories, characters and drawings of Mœbius, Druillet, Bilal and the other contributors remain in copyright with their authors, estates and publishers: build your own worlds, creatures and title lettering in the shared idiom, do not ask an image model to imitate a named artist, and never present a generated picture as a page from the magazine. The magazine's adult register also ran to sexualised depictions of women; keep that choice deliberate and give women the same agency and drawing care as the heroes.
Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics): Manga characters and series, from Astro Boy to Dragon Ball and One Piece, are in copyright and belong to their creators and publishers, and manga is the living work of professional artists and assistants: draw original characters in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for a named series, character or artist's hand, and label generated pages as AI-made rather than presenting them as a manga artist's work. Some of Tezuka's own books drew foreigners, including Black Africans and Asians, in exaggerated caricature; after protests from September 1990 by the Osaka-based Association to Stop Racism Against Blacks, Tezuka Productions put a disclaimer slip into his books. Give every character the same drawing care, and never use skin, lips or dress as ethnic shorthand.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Both grew from Franco-Belgian albums, and the magazine also printed clear-line artists such as Yves Chaland and Serge Clerc; ligne claire closes every form with one even, unhatched contour and flat colour in tidy panels, while Métal hurlant hatches and stipples its detail, modulates its colour and breaks the page into tableaux.
- Synthwave / Outrun Contrasts · Both picture the future as a 1970s and 1980s fantasy, but synthwave uses neon gradients, chrome and a perspective grid on black; switch to Métal hurlant for hand-drawn, pale desert light and alien organic forms.
- Art Nouveau Pairs well · Druillet drew the huge structures behind Lone Sloane partly from Art Nouveau and Gothic cathedrals; borrow Art Nouveau's whiplash frames and arched borders to turn a science-fiction splash page or cover into a baroque altarpiece.
- Solarpunk Contrasts · Both paint pale, luminous futures full of biomorphic forms, and solarpunk counts Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind among its models, a film Miyazaki said he directed under Mœbius's influence; solarpunk is utopian, verdant and floral, while Métal hurlant sets lone figures in empty alien deserts and colossal architecture, tells adult stories with sex and violence, and breaks comic pages into tableaux.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Mœbius's silent deserts and metamorphosing creatures share Surrealism's dream logic and long empty perspectives; add its uncanny juxtapositions to a science-fiction landscape, but keep the comic's sequence of drawn panels.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Contrasts · The American newsstand comic tells superhero stories in ruled panel grids with flat four-colour dot tints on newsprint; Métal hurlant, and Heavy Metal as a glossy full-colour magazine, told adult science fiction with sex and violence, painterly colour and pages exploded into single visions.
- L'Association and French Alternative Comics Contrasts · Luminous colour, vast science-fiction vistas and painterly spreads against small black-and-white books about dreams, illness and family: the two poles of adult French comics.
- Underground Comix Contrasts · Adult comics of the 1970s in two opposite registers: painted, luminous science-fiction vistas against cheap, crowded black-and-white satire.
With Story Manga
- Korean Webtoon Graphics Contrasts · The Korean webtoon turned manhwa, Korean comics shaped in part by Japanese manga, into a single full-colour scroll column with long empty gutters, first on PC portals and then on phones; return to story manga for a printed spread of black-and-white panels read right to left, with screentone and panels that bleed and break.
- American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Contrasts · Both are mass-market pen-and-ink comics with balloons and sound effects; the American comic book reads left to right in four-colour dot tints with hand-lettered capitals in a steadier grid, while story manga stays black and white, reads right to left, greys with screentone and sets its dialogue vertically.
- Lianhuanhua Picture-Story Books Contrasts · Both are cheap, widely rented East Asian picture-story books; lianhuanhua gives each palm-sized page one framed drawing with a caption beneath and no balloons, while story manga packs a page with panels of changing size, balloons, speed lines and drawn sound effects.
- Superflat Contrasts · Murakami's Superflat lifts anime and manga figures out of the story onto one flat, glossy, polychrome plane for the gallery; story manga keeps the sequence, the depth of its backgrounds and its single black ink.
- Taishō Roman & Lyrical Illustration Pairs well · Jojōga's large, highlighted, long-lashed eyes passed from Nakahara Jun'ichi to Takahashi Macoto, who added stars and dots to the iris, and so into shōjo manga; add Taishō lyrical faces, kimono patterns and soft lines to a manga page for a period romance.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Ligne claire closes every form with one even contour and flat colour, with no hatching or tone; story manga varies its line weight and builds grey and mood from screentone, solid blacks, speed lines and focus lines.
- Kawaii Design Pairs well · Kawaii takes manga's round faces and symbols but not its page; borrow its pastel mascots and rounded type for a comedy chapter, a character goods tie-in or a super-deformed aside, and keep the panels and screentone.
- Shōjo Manga (Japanese Girls' Comics) Pairs well · Girls' manga grew out of story manga from Tezuka's Princess Knight on and took its flowers, screentone moods and floating monologues furthest; borrow those when a story-manga page needs interior feeling rather than action.