In his introduction to the French hardcover graphic story collection
The Long Tomorrow,
Moebius wrote: The storytelling of "The Long Tomorrow" is inspired by
film noir and
hardboiled crime fiction, but the story is set in a distant,
science fiction future, making it one of the first true
cyberpunk stories. Pioneering cyberpunk author
William Gibson said of "The Long Tomorrow":"So it's entirely fair to say, and I've said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel 'looks' was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in
Heavy Metal. I assume that this must also be true of
John Carpenter's
Escape from New York,
Ridley Scott's
Blade Runner, and all other artifacts of the style sometimes dubbed 'cyberpunk'. Those French guys, they got their end in early". It was originally serialized in two segments in the French magazine
Metal Hurlant in 1976 and later by the American magazine
Heavy Metal in Vol. 1 No. 4 and Vol. 1 No. 5, which were published in July and August 1977, respectively.
The Long Tomorrow was published by
Marvel's
Epic Comics imprint in 1987. ==Influence==