The Heavy Metal animated film has been done and I fucking love it, so I think a kickass live-action Taarna movie would be amazing, although I’d include puppets and even miniature models instead of CGI! I’m not into everything looking “realistic” or “flawless.” I’m also a fan of ’80s horror movie VHS covers, which are so beautiful. I was obsessed with that style of animation, which was definitely the next generation of Taarna. One of my first memories is watching Aeon Flux and becoming immersed in that world. I absolutely love and miss hand-drawn animation. Say you were in charge-how would you bring Taarna to a new generation of moviegoers/comics fans, etc? I think I scared some families and turned on some dads. Cool.” I’ve worn it twice to conventions and I did this hike/photo shoot in the canyons swinging my sword dressed as Taarna. It’s FAR more interesting to get a few people insanely excited over an “obscure character” than to have every person say “oh wow look another sexy Harley Quinn. And you know what? I think that’s completely awesome. It was such a fucking amazing experience to walk into the convention and have these Heavy Metal fans immediately scream “TAARNA!!!” Sure, most of them were men over 40. What sort of reaction did you get when you wore it for the first time? My boobs were the only thing taped in this time! Julianne Tura as Taarna Tape and hot glue were barely holding that outfit together for Wondercon! So yeah, it was definitely a challenging costume especially for our first time working on something like that together! After that struggle, we bought a better sewing machine at a thrift store and cleaned up the costume a bit. So in typical Julianne fashion, we had to Velcro, snap, and mainly tape me into The Taarna costume. The morning we were to leave for the convention with still tons of work to do, of course our shitty sewing machine crapped out. Even the original Taarna has a hard time keeping all the bits in the right place. Then after many quick repeat viewings of the Taarna sequence and plenty of images printed out, he started fitting and sewing me into the fabric.
With only 48 hours before the convention, we rushed downtown to the fabric district and bought all the black and red leather fabric for the costume.
At that point, he had never sewn anything for anybody before. It was our first convention together and we both decided I would go as Taarna. I had just started dating my boyfriend and we were both into nerdy stuff, especially costuming, and he had recently began making costumes for himself. I’ve never purchased a costume and always made everything-clumsily-myself. Any costume I’ve made in the past, I would go to thrift stores like Goodwill and then tape, tie, glue, whatever it all together. I can’t sew for shit! I was kicked out of sewing class in 6th grade. What were the challenges of making this costume? I’m not shy and I’ll show off my body, but I want to do it in a warrior, ass-kicking sort of way. The badass, incredibly strong warrior woman and the hot buxom babe. As a preteen, I watched La Blue Girl and Golden Boy, and geeked out from comics and anime where the girls are ridiculously hot with giant breasts or filled with overly gratuitous boob/panty shots. On the other side of that, I’m a total fanboy. Yes, but are there any women in this movie? I also identify with Frank Frazetta’s drawings of gorgeous, busty, strong fantasy women, not to mention Frank Thorne’s Red Sonja and Ghita. When I was a teenager, I rented tons of ’80s cult films and fell in love with the awesomely cheesy movie Barbarian Queen (that Boris Vallejo painting is my favorite VHS cover of all time). As a kid, I was raised on Xena and She-Ra. Julianne Tura: I’ve always been intrigued by badass babes, especially tough, no-nonsense warrior women. Heavy Metal: What attracts you to the character of Taarna? We asked her for some pictures and before we knew it she was off to Bronson Canyon (that’s in L.A.) wearing the famous strapless and thigh-highs, stopping hikers in their tracks with her massive sword and modestly-sized Loc-nar. You don’t see nearly enough Taarna costumery-which is why we were glad to stumble across Julianne Tura, an actress and model who has the guts to carry on the Taarna tradition in an era dominated by superheroes and Slave Leias (not that we are against either). (By the way, Heavy Metal movie fans, there’s more to the movie than just the movie-step right this way for the 144-page Heavy Metal book and a sweet deal on the movie’s epic soundtrack.) Her name is Taarna, the alluring and fearless heroine of Heavy Metal, the movie, and in many ways the embodiment of what Heavy Metal is all about. In 1981, a swashbuckling valkyrie astride a pterodacto-chicken descended upon cinemas all over the world, and (non-kiddie) animated films have never been the same since.