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Showing posts from May, 2022

Review: Twilight Custard

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1855, Texas. A 'time of peace' between the United States and Mexico. Twilight Custard, a survivor of an attack on Fort Duncan six years previously - during which his wife was killed - is woken in the night by a blazing light falling from the sky.  Investigating the crash site, he comes across a metal object half-buried in the ground. Pulling it out, he discovers it is a mechanical man (or, the top half of one, actually). Strapping it to his horse, he continues on his journey towards the place where the fireball came to ground.  A little further on he sees a large metallic saucer surrounded by men with guns. When a group of Mexicans approach the artefact, the men shoot them. Twilight flees the scene and buries the mechanical man in his yard, deciding to forget all he has seen...  His wishes are thwarted, however, when he hears a voice in his head which says "You have to dig me up." Twilight Custard by writer Josh Wilson and artist William Muljo is a genre-blurring sci...

Review: World Eater

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"Today, the darkest shadow in our universe stands in our light." On the planet Pawl Gorn, Prince Rohm follows his mother the Holy Queen into the great Solar Temple. Outside the city gates an army is standing against a terrible invader: one individual, but possessing devastating power. A fearsome warrior known as the World Eater... The savage fighter cuts down the soldiers with ease, slicing and smashing his way through the line of defence. Resembling some bizarre cybernetic demon, he is unstoppable... unless the prince can claim a holy relic at the moment of the Great Eclipse. Rohm's duty is to wield an artefact of great power in order to defeat the evil reaper and save his world. A duty for which he is not ready... World Eater by writer/artist Momanoca is an explosive and dazzling work with gratifyingly atypical artwork. The characters are loosely rendered but with sharp linework and liberal use of special graphic effects to create stunning visuals. The pages are largel...

Review: Escape From Prometheus

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Shae Batiste and her trusty cyborg companion Albertron get a call from Commandant Mercurial. All contact has been lost with Prometheus Station, a vital outpost on the edge of the inhabited section of the galaxy. As agents of the Interstellar Exploration and Enforcement Agency, Shane and Albertron are tasked with investigating this mysterious incident. Their ship the ISS Kismet makes the hyperspace jump to the station. There is no sign of activity and communication channels are silent. The solar panels of the station appear to be covered in some type of vegetation. It is up to Shae - sporting long, red hair, with her athletic physique clad in a figure-hugging, iridescent turquoise catsuit - to venture in and tackle the situation head on.  An infestation of space weeds shouldn't be too hard to sort out, surely? Escape from Prometheus by writer/artist David Thomas Engquist is a fast-paced action adventure with colourful characters. Our heroine has to battle some very bizarre invaders...

Review: Inner Trek

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Chris Malgrain's  Inner Trek  is an anthology of three short stories, illustrated in Silver Age style black and white.  In  The Swamp of Shadows  newlyweds Mitch and Emma are on a honeymoon tour of the galaxy. Each planet they visit is more wonderful than the last. They are deeply in love and couldn't be happier... until their rocket takes them to a forest world filled with stunning natural beauty and a very disturbing hidden threat... In  Be Careful What You Wish For  private eye John Jaspers is on a case, tailing the husband of a rich client who suspects him of infidelity. Travelling to the uninhabited planet Valia 7 in his space car, he struggles to keep his mind on the job. His work pays the bills but takes him away from his wife, whose image haunts him constantly. It is a distraction that could turn deadly... In  The Race  a desert planet is the scene for a ritual contest. A nubile female emerges from the sand and climbs up onto a set of...

Review: GH-057 Story

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Android GH-057 (also known as 'Ghost') is searching planets for the valuable mineral carabalt when his spacecraft comes under attack from mysterious assailants. He returns fire but his ship is badly damaged Someone is hunting him from system to system... Mallory Embers is in a space pod travelling to the planet Ellys when a strange craft crashes into her. Both vessels make an emergency landing on a desolate planet. Her pod is out of action, but luckily the occupant of the other ship is friendly; it is Ghost and he offers her a lift to her destination. But there are a couple of complications... Not only is his ship damaged, his own personal power supply is also running low. Also, his presence as an outsider in the star system is illegal and the authorities are unlikely to be sympathetic to his plight. Then there is the problem of his pursuer, who is still out there somewhere and shows no signs of giving up. GH-057 Story by writer Folkenstal and artist Hoàng Trọng Thiện is a spac...

Review: Alien vs Predator - Thicker Than Blood

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The private luxury ship USSC Double Down is taking an unplanned detour through uncharted space when pirates board the ship and start killing everyone on board. These are no ordinary pirates, however. They are horrific alien butchers with no sign of any interest in looting. All they do is slaughter... The captain is hunkered down in the forward lounge with a few of the remaining survivors. Her children Maria and Tyler are also doing their best to stay alive, pursued through the ship by one of the invaders. They have one advantage: Tyler is no ordinary boy; he is an android programmed to protect his sister and he has a few special abilities help towards that goal. The kids head for an escape pod but access is blocked by the boarding ladder of the alien ship. Venturing into it to find a way to make it disengage, they inadvertently release something being held captive by the aggressors... something even more dangerous... Alien vs Predator - Thicker Than Blood by writer Jeremy Barlow and ...

Review: Astral Vengeance

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Astral Vengeance by writer/producer Jay Magnum and artist Ariel Medel is a new chapter in the saga that began with the Astral Thill3gy ( Astral Genesis, Astral Evolution, Astral Alliance ). The final chapter ended with a cliff-hanger; an alien impostor running for president of the USA... A race of god-like extraterrestrials known as the Astrals - and their demon-like servants the Shades - are planning to take over the Earth as part of their grand plan of galactic conquest. Part of their scheme is the creation of semi-human warriors with cybernetic enhancements. One of these, the formidable Lila, was accidentally released from her developmental capsule prematurely and consequently has free will (and a delightfully hard-ass nature), choosing to fight against her masters in the defence of Earth.  Vengeance begins with Lila and young Russian hacker Rob being transfered to a secure facility owned by the secret US military organisation Axe (a defence force against alien threats). What...

Review: Leaving The Cradle

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" Earth is the cradle of humanity  but one cannot live in a cradle forever." - K.E. Tsiolkovsky UFOlogist, conspiracy theorist and all-round sci-fi nerd Dan is on a camping trip in a remote forest with his friends Val and Mark. Being a Fox Mulder, truth-is-out-there type of enthusiast, Dan is sharing his crackpot notions with his skeptical pals over the camp fire when something comes crashing out of the sky... That something is, of course, an alien spacecraft and the vindication of all his long-derided convictions. Investigating the wreckage, the three young campers find the bodies of the alien crew ... and one injured survivor. At Dan's urging, they transport him quickly away from the crash site before the authorities have a chance to descend. Their new acquaintance is Gharr, a Raharr of the Alliance Fifth Expeditionary Fleet. Having dropped out of a wormhole into the outer solar system a month before, the Fleet detected radio signals from the third planet and decided to...

Review: Samantha F***s The World

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"I exist for pleasure. What could go wrong?" With her husband away on a business trip, Anaya Modi has the opportunity to find out what he has been hiding in the basement. It turns out to be Samantha, a sex robot. It is the near future and such recreational appliances are common worldwide. Samantha is different, however; she has somehow gained self-awareness. Anaya's first instinct is to smash Samantha to pieces, but the fembot talks to her and offers to help the woman with her marital problems. All that Anaya has to do is connect Samantha to the internet... The next thing we know, sex robots all over the world have run amok, creating havoc as they randomly attack their owners. At the United Nations building interpreter Peter and his soldier girlfriend Avi are caught in the middle. The US President calls and gives them a mission: persuade India to shut down its connection to the net in order to isolate the source of the outbreak. To do this, they have to reach the conferen...

Review: Wasted Space

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The galaxy is wrecked—a cocktail of warlords, pirates, and tinpot dictators, stirred to a frenzy by an alcoholic former prophet. Take a sip and get wasted. Billy Bane used to be a big deal in the galaxy. Not long ago he was a cult leader, to whom 'the Creator' appeared and spoke directly. This Creator - in the form of a robot or perhaps a man in cybernetic armour - instructed Billy to support the powers that be and tell his followers to do the same, eased by the mantra "All will be well." Thanks to his endorsement, politician Devolous Yam rose to become the leader of the galaxy... and began a galactic war that cost countless lives and made Billy a pariah. Disillusioned, Billy went on the run, changing his appearance and piloting a ship throughout the backwaters of space. His companion is Dust, a blue-skinned muscular 'fuqbot' who uses his erotic skills to earn the money they need to keep going. Plenty of people want Billy dead, which is bad enough, but things ...

Review: Bertha Dreams of Stars

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Berlin, Sept. 1, 2232: Dr Bertha Motel is at a party and engaging in some deep, philosophical conversation with her friend Vincent McGraw (also known as Slug). Suddenly a mass of huge bio-mechanical tentacles burst through the wall and snatch Slug away... A little while later Bertha is part of a small crew all set to board a space station which is heading out on a research mission beyond the galaxy. She is an engineer with the Earth Space Commission, which has recently been granted a passport by the Inter-Galactic Coalition's Traffic Control Bureau to send a vessel out into the great unknown. Historical mistakes by NASA led to restrictions being imposed upon humanity; this is an opportunity for the reputation of the Helios System to be restored. Her four team-mates are joyfully enthusiastic at the pre-launch presentation, but Bertha is distracted and unsettled. Who, or what, has taken her friend and fellow engineer Slug, and why? Bertha Dreams of Stars: Chapter 001 - The Human Kno...

Review: Awaken

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With Earth destroyed, humanity is left to drift through the cosmos in search of a new home. All that remains of our once abundant planet is Fruatia. This nomadic island is the pinnacle of human technology and the last hope for the survival of our species. Like the legendary Flat Earth, this disc of land is encased in a force field. The Inner Sanctum is the high-tech heart of the self-contained world and home of the elite. The Outer Ring contains the majority of the population, who live a more conventional existence. In such a limited environment rules and regulations are paramount, but four young students find themselves at odds with the strict and oppressive regime under which they live. Zesh is intellectually gifted but distracted. His fiends Son, Michael and Kit see the inequality and injustice around them and suffer helpless anger.  "There has to be a better way." Then Zesh starts to have some very bizarre hallucinations, leading him to explore new possibilities and setti...

Review: New Masters

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In the early part of the 21st century the Jovian fleet burst into our solar system, bringing with it  the Ark of Species. When the Fleet slammed into Earth it scattered debris across the surface and leaked exotic fuels into the soil. This cataclysmic event swallowed great cities like New York, London, Paris and Berlin. However, it also fueled the rise of new interplanetary ports of call such as Lagos, Morocco  Mumbai and Hong Kong. As memories of the old world faded into myth and legend, the import and influence of the new grew. Ola is crossing a line... Taking her flutterbike deep into the Eko Exclusion Zone she enters a crashed spaceship in search of advanced components to salvage and sell in the Yaba Market. Accompanied by her trusty robot  À ṣ ẹ, she also stumbles across a rich source of obsidium, the highly valuable fuel which allows for transit between HyperGates.  Beginning the extraction process, girl and robot are disturbed by ominous red tentacles rising fr...