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Showing posts from August, 2021

Review: Frontier Forever - Regenesis

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After a long period of machine rule, Earth has become a reservation for the way life had once been. The embargo protecting humanity's homeworld from the insidious technology that affords the rest of civilisation life amongst the stars has been corrupted and the Athena-class Marshal is sent to investigate. Frontier Forever - Regenesis  by writer Ben Krieger and artist Gianmaria Orlandi is a cyberpunk Western set on an Earth transformed beyond recognition. Technology is strictly limited. A few megacities remain, sealed under domes, but most people live in towns or settlements resembling 19th century American colonies. One such is Mechanicsburg, ruled over by smuggler kingpin Mister Morton, who is illegally creating weapons using migrant labourers with computer-brain interface tech.  To counter this affront to the natural order, Earth's steward the Matron (an elderly nun in a luxurious orbiting spacecraft) has initiated the production of the Athena-class Marshal, a genetically en...

Review: Speed of Light #1

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"For thousands of years we have scratched and clawed our way across every inch of space. Throughout every corner of the galaxy. We went opening doors we shouldn't have. Pushing the limits of our own understanding of our place in the universe... We were never meant to come here and now we will never leave." Speed of Light from Evoluzione Publishing, brought to you by producer by Marcel Dupree, is a bi-monthly science fiction anthology comic magazine (72 x black and white pages: 9 x 8-page stories; some serialised, some standalone. Issue one hits the ground running with a very satisfying collection of stories, some light and whimsical, most edgy and a little disturbing. The reader will be keen to know what happens next in these extraordinary tales. Here we have a nightmarish dystopia, a moon with a dazzling mystery, a battle between robots and wizards, a world torn apart by shimmering spacetime rifts, an investigator tracking an insidious space parasite, droids on the run,...

Review: Chariot

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"Don't think. React." It's the Eighties. Gillian is a glamorous young mercenary and she has just stolen a car. Not just any old vehicle, either, this is a high-tech, state-of-the-art supercar: very fast, virtually indestructible and with a built-in computer that can interface with the mind of the driver... As she races along a high pass next to a lake she is pursued by thugs with guns. Bullets bounce off this fortress-on-wheels and, with a sharp manoeuvre, the goons crash into it and burst into flame. The driver smiles... until she crosses a bridge and sees a helicopter gunship bearing down on her. A missile destroys the bridge and the supercar falls into the lake, undamaged but with a drowning occupant. Gillian struggles to escape but in vain. There is a flash of light... and then darkness for a long time. It's the present day. Jim is a hulking ex-con working in a scrapyard. His young son has chronic kidney failure and he and his ex-wife have little in the way o...

Review: Armor

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Being a teenager is fraught with challenges. Being sixteen and moving home with your dad and kid sister to a distant town and starting a new school is bound to throw many more of those challenges your way: being the awkward new kid, making new friends, dealing with bullies, having to look out for said kid sister, having to follow Dad's dumb rules, having to hide the piece of alien technology you found in a crashed UFO... Okay, that last one probably wasn't quite so typical, but for Jason King his first week in a new school is about to become far from ordinary. Armor by writer Marcel Dupree and artists Joel Cotejar and Danielle Cosentino is an action adventure meets teen drama, two worlds colliding with explosive results. Far out in the void of space, a war between two races has raged for many years. Scientist Kizan Je'diah of Weaporopara has created a new weapon that could shift the balance of power and bring an end to the war. Lord Novaden of the enemy side naturally want...

Review: The Saturn Effect: Alpha

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A group of large space stations orbit Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, prized for its wealth of natural resources and a potential candidate for terraforming. Two years ago one of the stations was deliberately destroyed... Alpha has a piece of advanced technology fixed to his left arm; it is of Martian design, given to him by his father. His parents are dead now, and he is alone with his sister Ri. Enhanced is a Modified (or 'mutie'), taking part in a protest. She is risking her life; the security forces are prepared to use deadly force to quell the demonstration. Bones is a Pure, watching the protest from afar with his brother Glass. The Pure see themselves as racially superior to all other forms of life - especially muties - but when Bones and Glass get caught up in the ensuing  mêlée , it is the time for some very odd alliances to be made... The Saturn Effect: Alpha by writer Chris Moses and artist Francesco Mazzoli is a complex action drama set against a dizzying, high-t...

Review: The Saturn Effect / Ajax

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"When you meet someone, you never think of the last time you'll see them... The last time you'll hear their voice... All the guilt and regret when they're gone." 2120: Saturn's largest moon Titan is the site of Earth colonisation, orbited by several space stations. The only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere, it is viewed as a good candidate for terraforming. But all is not rosy in the garden... Ajax and Helena are on a mission to sabotage one of the stations. Ajax distracts the defence fighters while Helena's shuttle lays charges. But for what reason? They grew up on New New York, a floating city and the hub of the solar system. Ajax's father was a veteran of the war between Earth and Mars, a war that ended with independence for Mars and ownership of the Titan colonies for Earth. The war is over, thanks to Martian leader Dane Jericho, a sinister figure who has now found microbial life on Jupiter's moon Europa. Something about the newly di...

Review: Fear Agent

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Got an infestation? A little pest problem? Of the large, dangerous, extraterrestrial kind? Who ya gonna call? Heath Huston is your go-to guy. He may be a whiskey-drenched Texan redneck but he sure knows how to kill all manner of aggressive aliens... He should: he's a veteran of the war that wiped out nearly all life on Earth. Ten years ago his father and son were both killed when two warring races brought their conflict to his backyard. He led a group of survivors fighting back against the invaders. His band called themselves the 'Fear Agents', paying the aliens back some of the terror visited upon them.  Between the Tetaldians (organic brains in robot bodies) and the Dressites (green slime creatures in cybernetic suits), both toting hi-tech weaponry, it was a wonder anyone did come out of it alive, but finally the nightmare came to an end. Unfortunately one of the costs of victory was Huston's relationship with his wife.  Deciding to make good use of his skills, he hir...

Review: Jack Irons The Steel Cowboy

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Our universe is fractured into the Four Horsemen's sick whims, a cracked mirror of sentient life's deepest lusts and fears, made manifest in excess. Earth is a reservation kept "safe" by a corrupt Alien Government, trying to maintain it's facist control over what "free" galaxy is left, by any means necessary. Humanity lives, cowers, and makes do, alongside alien refugees and pilgrims, behind the impenetrable walls of New Deadwood. When reality belongs to Evil, Heroes are INEVITABLE . 2076 and it's Armageddon... and not one of your namby-pamby metaphorical armageddons; this here is the real deal with your actual Four Horsemen: War, Famine, Pestilence and Death.  According to the alien Anu Confederation, these embodiments of evil are an inevitable part of every sentient species' development: " Creatures born of blackened thought-form, made manifest from our own obsessions."  The purpose of these beings is to perpetuate a perverted versio...

Review: Venus Rises - Exordium

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Earth is our past. Mars is our present. Venus is our future. In the near future, Earth is devastated by a chain of cataclysmic events leading to a pandemic collapse of governments. The human race narrowly escapes Earth with technology amassed by mega-corporations, and colonizes Mars and Venus. As Venus becomes home to the working class, and Mars the seat of power, long-running political and cultural clashes return. Talk of revolution permeates the ether. Humankind finds itself once again at the crossroads of extinction as... VENUS RISES. Terry Holden is captain of the salvage vessel Cattywompus , owned by the mighty Shirokawa Corporation, subcontracted to the Inner Planet Transport Association. In orbit of Venus they receive a distress call from a passenger ship that is stranded without power after being hit by a micrometeroid. The Cattywompus takes the job and heads in to offer assistance. In the Eurybia city dome on Mars, Hollister Pelt prepares for an important meeting. He is an as...

Review: Runners

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Between the pockets of unified space and allied systems lie the open expanses collectively known as Roguespace. Unpatrolled by Interstellar authorities, these wild frontier sectors are home to all those who exist outside the system and operate outside the law... The Khoruysa Brimia is a freighter specialising in not-altogether-legal shipments, currently working for gangsters. En route to a rendezvous in the Gamelon system the multispecies crew receives a distress call from the ship from which they are due to transfer cargo. The ship is under attack by marauders. With the cargo at risk, the Khoruysa Brimia increases speed to race to its defence. When they arrive they find the ship deserted but the cargo mostly intact: several large cylindrical containers. One of these has broken, spilling fluid onto the deck. Lying in the fluid is a young female humanoid with blue skin. Is she crew, passenger... or cargo? The marauders return - old rivals of Captain Roka - but our heroes prevail and se...

Review: Parched Earth Chronicles #1

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"How many times do I have to tell you, boy? THE NIGHT BITES!" Many years after the Third World War the planet is a wasteland with the few survivors living within walled cities. Monstrosities prowl the 'parched lands' outside... monstrosities that used to be people. Writer/artist Oliver G. Francisco's Parched Earth Chronicles is an anthology of four stories set in this dark post-apocalypse. Each is illustrated in stark monochrome, predominantly black, each disturbing panel sculpted from hungry, devouring shadows. Figures are drawn with a loose, expressive energy, sometimes edging over into the comical, but all the more macabre for that. In Journeymen an old veteran tells his grandson the story of how the world fell into nightmare and the danger of the horrors outside. In Dreamer a man is seduced by a mysterious female figure who stalks his sleeping hours, calling him to follow her... but to where? In The Runner by guest writer/artist Erik Guzman Pingol an athle...