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Alright I was going to post more horror related comics in the “Hey Kids! Comics!” thread, but then I decided to do actual reviews of obscure shit you’ve never heard of again. (Some of it will still be horror related anyway)

As always a little history first…

This one will focus on a group of comics that TSR published back in the late 80s. If you don’t know who they are, well they’re the original company that published Dungeons and Dragons before they got bought out by Wizards of the Coast who then got bought out by Hasbro, but that’s a whole other conflict shitstorm.

What THIS conflict shitstorm involves was TSR and DC comics. Back in the mid 80s, DC had a deal with TSR to publish comics based on D&D along with some of the other settings like Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance. These apparently were doing pretty well and around this time and TSR was foolishly expanding in all fucking directions and figured they could conquer the comic market, books, tv shows, etc.

This type of thinking combined with them producing a new setting every other year of which only about half of them were ever getting much attention is ultimately what got them into bankruptcy and bought out later in the 90s. But again, this is a larger issue.

So back to DC, TSR saw that their product was doing well under the DC brand. True they were making money off it, but so was DC. The idea was “Hey we can make these comics ourselves and keep ALL the money!”

However they’d already sold the rights to their top tier shit, so they had to go with their own made up ideas along with a new license they’d just acquired and were REALLY trying to push. This particular license was Buck Rogers.

This worked out about as well as you’d expect, meaning not at all.

First off, people were buying the DC comics because the settings like Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and AD&D were known and popular among that particular nerd group. Plus DC on its own is a big enough brand that it can even attract DC fanboys to perhaps take a look at something else published under them even if it isn’t what they’d normally buy. The TSR comics weren’t even in set in what was going to presumably attract their main support nerds.

Second, this move severely pissed off DC who now saw TSR as a competitor, so what they promptly did was stop fucking publishing all the TSR related comics. Because hey, they got the goddamn BATMAN to earn them money, who needs a bunch of elven faggots? So now TSR just lost a steady source of cash income.

Third, apparently TSR attempted to avoid conflict with DC by selling their shit in actual bookstores rather than comic shops which didn’t help in the visibility department. (And it failed anyway) This one I’m not too sure about since I do remember finding these comics in comic shops, however the comic shops I was going to back in the day tended to have their share of actual books and gaming items so I guess it might have varied. I do remember bookstores back in those ancient times usually having a comic section and seeing these there though.

Which brings up the final point of why these failed is they were most likely really expensive to produce compared to the average comic. As mentioned in the title of this thread, each of these comics came with a free game inside. They even tried to avoid the “comic” label by calling them “Comic Modules” which was just retarded. (And another failed attempt to avoid conflict with DC)

So what were the games, well it depended on the comic. Sometimes they were based on the comic issue you just read and sometimes they were completely unrelated to it. Types of games involved chess variants with monster pieces, maze chases, simple card games, small scale wargames and more. They were usually a couple of pages near the back of the comic including the instructions and you cut out the pieces. Yep, that’s right, you took a fucking SCISSOR to your comic and cut the shit out of it. Even better, was that the cover and back cover were sometimes the “game board” to these things. You’d gently try to remove the comic covering without the staple ripping it too much. All of which meant you just totally destroyed your fucking comic and it will NEVER be in mint condition.

But only obsessive comic faggots worry about that shit anyway. You never had to cut up the actual story part of the comic, so I gleefully cut up some of my comics to play these things, the only downside obviously is paper counters/pieces tend to have a habit getting lost/destroyed as years go on, so unfortunately I don’t have any of these little games anymore. Now I do have some of the games intact. Mostly those I never bothered cutting out due to either being lazy or the game just not being interesting enough for me to bother.

Alright I’ve talked about everything now except what were the comics actually about, well I’ll be going into that in more detail in later posts as I review, but TSR published 5 separate comics. 13 Assassin, Buck Rogers, Intruder, Warhawks and RIP. Of those I collected all of them except 13 Assassin and Warhawks. From the cover(s) of Warhawks it looked like it focused on war shit set in various time periods like WW2 and the like. Apparently it was a time travel comic, but even if I’d known that, I don’t think that would have sparked my interest in it any more. 13 Assassin I assume was some revenge ninja martial arts shit which I also didn't have much interest in or at least not in comic book form.

I should mention that all of the comic series had at least 2 “major story arcs” (Buck had 3) For example Issues 1-4 of RIP was all one story arc while issues 5-8 were a completely different one. All the comics usually also had a second unrelated story in them too, though Buck again being an exception since he had an established setting so the second stories were still in that  same setting

The main one that caught my immediately attention was RIP since it was horror based and right on the first issue there’s fucking zombies on it. And if you remember from my OTHER comic series review, Deadworld was the only proper zombie comic in town at the time, so yeah of course I bought it…and was promptly a victim of false advertising, but it wasn’t all bad.

The other one I got into was the Buck Rogers comic. Now at the time I remembered the very short lived TV Show back in the early 80s and I hadn’t minded it. That probably peaked my interest along with enjoying scifi things. As I said TSR at the time really was pushing this license hard. They had an RPG of the setting, a board game (Which I owned) AND two video games, but for whatever reason Buck NEVER caught on much to the dismay of TSR.

Finally there was Intruder which I actually didn’t get into immediately. I didn’t get into Intruder until the second arc, so I sort of missed out on what it was all about exactly though I got the general idea and you didn’t really need to read the first one to understand the second arc. The main premise of Intruder was basically some regular human dude jumping from reality to reality and getting into adventures (He’s typically running a lot) Honestly I’d say the main storyline of this comic was never what interested me so much as the second “Side B” stories that were included in this one.

Well that’s enough for an intro, next post I’ll start off with RIP first. (And yes there will probably be pretty pictures)

Alright I’m going to split the reviews up a little differently. I’ll go over an entire main story arc for a comic series and then the following post I’ll do all the little one off stories in another post. Then I’ll repeat a similar process with the rest of these.

RIP Story Arc 1-4: Dead Connection

To be fair I suppose the comic never actually SAID it was going to be a zombie story just because it had some walking corpses on the cover.

First off I should mention that this arc doesn’t even really have a title of sorts other than “RIP”. I’m calling it the Dead Connection though for the sake of labeling things and the fact that this whole thing starts out with a show like Love Connection which was a dating game show back in the 80s-90s (And this y’know involves dead people)

Alright so first issue starts off with a nameless gameshow host crawling around with his guts spilling out and his face half hacked open. He soon learns after speaking with some other corpses roaming around, he’s dead and this is the afterlife. He also realizes someone has killed him though he doesn’t know who it was.

Putting this altogether, one of the corpses tell him that the current place they all are is a sort of Limbo where they just wait around forever. However, you can rest in peace if you get revenge on the one who killed you.

So he heads back to the land of the living as a ghost where he starts doing some investigating. It should also be mentioned he’s pretty much making snarky wisecracks and being sarcastic whenever’s he’s talking (Which is usually to himself)

Upon going back to his game show, he sees they’ve already replaced him and the woman (Loray) that was on the show the night he died is back on it and she’s picking yet another guy on it. He’s not even the one the audience voted for (They voted for the Chad football player) but he’s more what Loray is looking for which is he’s a lonely below average looking single rich guy that works on Wall Street.

Well it doesn’t take long to find out that Loray isn’t just an ordinary gold digging hussy, she’s a succubus on a mission. There’s this whole coven of succubi scheming for world domination by turning various powerful men into their slaves. Using the dating game is just one of their ways of hooking up with these men.

And yes, this DOES sound like a very silly way to go about this plan for world domination via simps, but let’s just go with it.

So she enslaves Michael who then starts telling all his other lonely buddies to go on the show to hook with succubi, though oddly Loray seems to be the only one currently working this angle so she keeps going on the show, claiming she has a contract to appear on there a bunch of times.

How does this tie in with the game show host’s murder? Well he just sort of figures that Loray must be behind it somehow so he starts following her and Michael around trying to learn more. Keep in mind that he can’t actually be heard or seen by anyone. So he’s basically just ranting a lot of times in frustration about how he hates being dead and telling Michael to snap out of it.

Eventually he DOES manage to sort of get through to him causing Michael to start “rebelling” a bit from his succubus seduction, though it’s not really clear if that’s due to the game show host’s ghost powers weakly having an effect or the succubus just stretching the limits of her own powers due to all the men she’s been seducing and controlling.

So Michael stops simping to the point where he begins to start getting jealous and angry that his succubus girlfriend is still going out with other dudes on the game show. Not wishing to be a cuck any longer he barges in on her while she’s in the middle of sucking another guy’s…soul. She’s pissed about Michael not being a good little simp and knowing his place, so she beats the shit out of him in her succubus form which definitely isn’t “waifu” material (Well I’m sure it still would be to some) and leaves him for dead.

However, Michael isn’t quite dead yet and he manages to drag his ass to the game show studio and interrupting the show screaming that she’s a monster, killed people and all that.

Now what she does next isn’t the brightest move if you’re in a secret society, instead of say playing innocent and just saying she doesn’t know what this obviously crazy man is talking about, she ends up transforming right on fucking camera in front of a live studio audience talking about how mistakes on camera can’t be corrected. Well no shit you dumb demonic bitch, you just made a huge one by exposing yourself.

Anyway she finishes off Michael in a gruesome way (You see his ribs getting pulled out, meanwhile ghost host is yelling at Michael saying he isn’t going to just let some succubus kick his ass like that is he) In his final death moments Michael manages to pull a huge hot light down on her setting her on fire and killing her. (Meanwhile she’s saying in her own dying moments that this will stop nothing)

You see Ghost Host cheering that “his side” won, while the audience snaps out of their shock and start clapping, believing that all of this is part of the show (While mentioning somewhere a TV executive smiles knowing this is going to be the highest rated episode ever)

You then get an epilogue of Ghost Host still in the 50s Diner Limbo since the succubus wasn’t the one who killed him. He’s a bit down about it, but another dead one explains he gets a few more chances at getting revenge before he goes into the SHAME pit forever. Just then the Loray comes walking into the diner a little confused about her situation. She then recognizes Ghost Host saying that he was the one who got chopped up and if he’s here then this must mean she’s dead too.

He starts questioning her on who had him killed, but she says she doesn’t know and it wouldn’t be her group since he wouldn’t have been important enough to bother because they focus on upwardly mobile men of power. Game show hosts are a dime a dozen. She then goes on about how they have this major plan to have their agents in key locations on Wall Street and how Silicon Valley is next and how its going to be glorious, she then laments that she just wish she was still alive to see it.

Despite being told that it wasn’t her coven of demonic dominatrixes, the ghost host still believes that someone in this succubus conspiracy must know something, so his next step is heading to Silicon Valley for his next shot at revenge.

Issue 2

Hawt.

So this one starts off with Ghost Host helpfully explaining the “rules” to Limbo to a recently run over jogger, before he goes on his next trip to revengeville.

As expected this one picks up in Silicon Valley where the succubus group are feeding on some dude and giving some helpful exposition while doing it or at least the head succubus bitch is. She goes on to say that there’s three stages of feedings. One gets them under their power, but still keeps them somewhat independent so they can do stuff on their own. Second drains them to the point of only being good enough as mindless thugs and soldiers while the third just wastes them away to husks.

Despite all this, some are still able to resist, but they just kill them in that case. Also it shows they own an insane asylum where they can just pop in and feed as much as they want to sustain their immortality.

So at this point, it’s sort of going on the idea that in THIS world at least, succubi are more like vampires rather than demons from hell. Though it still sort of doesn’t make it clear if they’re from some hell domain. One would think not considering Loray didn’t go back to hell when she got killed she got sent to Limbo though even that is a bit odd since going by “the rules” of that place. You go there when your soul isn’t at peace. She got killed by Michael with a parting death blow, so it isn’t like she’d be able to get revenge on him though maybe she’s just eternally damned to the place or something.

I dunno, it’s a dumb horror comic, why the fuck are you expecting logic?

So bringing it back to our Ghost Host protagonist, he literally doesn’t give a fuck if the succubi take over the world, all he wants to know is if they’re the ones that were involved in killing him and then while making his point he ends up ghostly touching the head succubus who then recoils exclaiming that she felt a cold presence like they were being spied on. One her underlings says she felt it too. So now we’ve established that Ghost Host does have influence on the earthly realm after all.

So this one mostly revolves around some computer nerds George and Mark. Mark looks more like a traditional Virgin nerd, yet he’s got the girlfriend Janice. Meanwhile George looks more like a Chad, but he’s going on that “Love and Marriage” game show that the succubi are using to pick up dudes. (Again, this seems like a really convoluted plan, seriously they could easily just meet these guys the old fashioned way a lot quicker) There’s some nerd talk about computer security and the game show is brought up, but Janice doesn’t seem too happy that George is going on it. (Also brought up is how there was a monster that attacked on the show in New York, but it’s all been dismissed as a publicity stunt)

Cut to Mark later calling out his girlfriend Janice that he knows damn well that she’s been looking at George and doesn’t really love him. Janice tries to explain that she really wanted it to work out between them, but well she can’t help being a whore. She says she’s moving out and Mark in a major simp move exclaims that he still wants to be friends which Janice accepts because it’s always a good idea to have dick in a jar just in case of an emergency.

Janice moves out and excitedly goes to tell George who apparently went on the dating show and is now acting pretty strangely. He’s hostile towards Janice and exclaims he’s busy working. Janice is upset since her whore plan isn’t working out like she thought it was going to, then she also notices that George is transferring private info to another place that he’s not supposed to be doing.

Cut back to the succubi where one of them is going on about how this was a good plan since he’s giving them vital information, though the head succubus doesn’t like this plan. Apparently Angelica (The succubus who went out on the date with George) soul sucked him twice in one night (Because he resisted a bit) which is risky since it can turn the dude into an Incubus and you can’t have a proper girls’ coven if you got horny demon dudes now running around in it. (Plus letting transforms humans into the inner circle isn’t what the head succubus wants)

It all comes to a head when George is tired of Janice interfering with his work and he just transforms into his incubus form chasing after her, exclaiming that she will be his forever and to not resist him. After narrowly escaping and stabbing George in the eye, naturally, she goes running back to Mark to save her. (See? Keeping the dick in the jar for an emergency WAS needed sooner than she thought!)

A scuffle ensues and George probably could have easily killed Mark, but he’s so HORNY for Janice that he can’t even be bothered to finish him off before trying to RAEP Janice.

George starts going on about how long he’s waited to fuck Janice and how Mark won’t stand in his way. Mark still can’t believe all of this is real and half believes that he’s dreaming, but if it is a dream, he’s going to be the hero in it and manages to kill George by slicing his wings and then shoving him through broken glass shards.

So now Angelica has lost her link, though with some encouragement, the head succubus tells her that she can still control his body like a puppet, which she starts to do resulting in some body horror where George’s dead succubus carcass is unleashing its intestines to act as ropes to try to capture Mark and Janice. Around this point Mark tries to access George’s computer to learn where he was sending the info to so he can find out who is behind all this. He gets the info and he and Janice are soon being chased by most of the office where they work now since the succubi have already taken over most of them to use as soldiers.

Mark runs over George and his wacky intestine rodeo, but the succubus slaves manage to rip Janice out of the car. Mark just screams that he’ll be back for her which is funny though realistically leaving her behind was about the only thing he could do.

He heads back home and manages to get the exact address of where the info was sent and heads over there with a pistol in hand. There’s a short monolog by Mark about how he JUST bought the thing since being a liberal faggot guns were against everything he stood for, but as any real american knows you ALWAYS need a gun. Meanwhile Ghost Host is saying to just get on with blasting the succubitches back to hell.

He goes in the house seeing a bunch of succubi doing some sort of feeding ritual with Janice while the head succ is saying how she’ll enjoy being one of them. (Oh sure head succ made a big deal about not wanting humans into the inner circle, but she’s alright with it as long as they’re fellow vaginia havers. Women go an’ figure ‘em!)

Mark goes into supreme gentleman mode and starts mowing down the succubi, including the head succ who gets a bullet in her dome. Ghost Host is cheering him on the entire time until one of the succubi manages to tackle Mark knocking the gun out of his hand. It’s at this point things look grim until Ghost Host is so frustrated by this situation he wonders if he can move things like a poltergeist. He focuses really hard and sure enough he manages to move the gun and shoot the succubus attacking Mark. (Making Mark briefly wonder who shot her)

The surviving succubi at this point fly away and Mark goes to untie Janice saying how much he loves her and that how this time everything between them will be better. Janice exclaims that she loves Mark too, but wishes that he’d saved her in time. He’s confused by this until Janice explains she’s already been turned just as he soon will be and promptly soul sucks him.

Ghost Host is now lamenting that not only did he go through all this just to get an unhappy ending, but apparently Mark didn’t manage to kill any of the succubi that were directly involved in his death so he’s wasted another chance at revenge.

Issue 3

This doesn't actually happen anywhere in the comic, but it's still a cool cover

Okay so next one begins with an introduction to a Bruce Campbell knock off called Brad Gorman, except he’s not as cool since he doesn’t like the B-movies he’s playing in and feels he’s better than all that. Shows an obviously evil studio executive called Pressner that offers Brad a deal and to meet him later.

Cut to the next scene of this same exe with a bunch of women (More succs) doing some sort of ritual to summon some sort of demon spirit who is pissed that they keep summoning him for minor shit. He reassures them that Brad will be famous, so getting him under their control will be a good thing for their world domination plans.

Ghost Host is spying on all this and now he’s starting to wonder if the succs were actually behind his murder, he’s REALLY sure that they were so he questions the demon spirit that’s done with the succ collect call. After harassing the demon spirit long enough, eventually the DS decides that he isn’t being paid enough in souls and the succs still owe him for shit they haven’t paid yet, so in order to get rid of Ghost Host he tells them about the Brad situation.

So Ghost Host follows up on the Brad lead, keep in mind he’s STILL working on a hunch. There’s still no damn proof of anything and he could be very well wasting his chances at revenge.

Brad shows up to Pressner’s studio where he’s met with several half naked women and how this is his audition. He’s all for it at first, but then he starts feeling weird and starts asking about what’s his motivation, what’s the plot and script and then finally if this is a porn movie, because he doesn’t do porn.

Ghost Host is watching all this from Limbo in a broken down TV shop and in comic book logic without actually explaining how, he is actually able to appear on the screens in the real world at Brad’s “audition”. (Something about how him being a game show host on TV in life is implied) From there he directly warns Brad that he needs to get the fuck out of there right now lest he gets his soul sucked. Brad isn’t exactly sure what’s going on, but he’s creeped out by the whole situation enough that he escapes immediately. This pisses off the succubi of course and they nearly kill Pressner, but he manages to grovel enough that he lives for now.

Brad’s hiding out in another section of the studio, specifically Pressner’s office looking for a gun saying that all wimps like him usually own one to PROVE THEIR MANHOOD. Instead he finds files of the Love and Marriage show that look important considering how they were hidden. And now Ghost Host manages to appear once again on a TV in the office and rather than being a “kindly guide” that’s explaining the situation he’s a complete dick that starts insulting Brad immediately, calling him “jerk-toast” and mentioning that getting soul sucked into a zombie wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for Brad. (And then explains everything)

Meanwhile the succubi are calling upon their soul sucked actors to search the studio for Brad. However Pressner figures it out that Brad’s hiding in his own office since the lights are off in it and he always leaves the lights on due to being scared of the dark. Idiotically however instead of telling his succubi masters immediately, he goes to confront Brad directly and THEN calls security.

Brad easily dispatches Pressner by throwing him out the window where he splats on the ground which then alerts the lynch mob looking for him. So the next few pages are Brad monologging in his head about his situation and the various movies he’s done. He kills all the succubi chasing him on various sets he’s worked on. One gets killed by an animatronic giant octopus that drowns her (There’s actually a bit where Brad is confused on how she can fly over running water and she tells him “That’s vampires you fool!”) Another gets laser blaster by some robots on a scifi set with Brad mentioning that he once complained that the effects were too realistic.

The last one corners him in the costume room and she does the dumb villain thing of gloating about how she’s going to kill him until he manages to get away from her long enough to grab a rubber arm to smack her in the head with which causes her to fall off the platform they’re both on and into a big vat of polyurethane.

Final scene is Brad hitchhiking on some desolate road and mentioning that the files he found contain all the places the succubi have hit and the next stop is DC. Ghost Host is around cheering his fortune that finally he’s picked someone that has lived this time.

Issue 4

I like how the succubus on the covers don't look anything like the demonic monsters in the actual comic

So this starts right away with Brad in DC and confronting a senator called Clayton who has agreed to see him despite no appointment since she’s a big fan of his movies. He brings up the Love and Marriage show files and mentions that her name is on one of the faxes.

She expresses surprise and accuses this of all being a publicity stunt while showing him out. He keeps trying to explain himself, but things get worse when he recognizes one of the succubi from the “audition” and she recognizes him as well. Doesn’t take long before the senator also transforms into her natural form and they try to stop him from escaping.

He manages to get to a public area, bumping into a bunch of other male senators and then going on about the succubus conspiracy. Clayton and her fellow succ come around the corner in their human forms and she makes up a story about how this homeless man just started ranting at her about this odd tale (Brad isn’t in the best looking condition right now given he’s been travelling all the way from the west coast)

So they all decide the best thing to do is have him thrown into a mental institution since that’s where crazy people should go, plus the succ like to keep folks in there anyway until they have time to take care of them properly.

Ghost Host is pretty frustrated by all this, especially when he sticks around long enough around Clayton and her cronies discussing that they’ll take care of Brad like they took care of that “Dolt who originally hosted Love and Marriage” (Nope, you still don’t learn his real name)

Finally this bit of really lucky random gloating vindicates Ghost Host’s suspicions that the succubi had him killed (Specifically the Senator) though he’s confused on why she did except she mentions he saw something he shouldn’t have despite the fact that he has no idea what the fuck it was he supposedly saw.

Yep, Ghost Host’s murder (and reveal of the murderer) are in the scheme of things a really “Shit happens” sort of thing. He never saw anything and the succubi just thought he did and had him killed. Whoops!

Meanwhile Brad’s locked up in a mental asylum where he’s trying to figure out on how to escape along with noticing that it’s run very strangely with the staff weighing people everyday and making comments about someone being too skinny or needing to fatten up. It’s sort of implied the whole mental asylum part of the larger plan involves rounding up the homeless as the source of an easy meal whenever the succubi get hungry.

Surprisingly despite being somewhat of a security concern for the succubi, Brad isn’t really confined very tightly. The guards beat him occasionally and he’s not allowed to leave, but it’s not like he’s in a straight jacket drugged up and in a dark cell in the basement. Hell, his cell isn’t even all that bad in the scheme of things.

Eventually Brad manages to get out just by breaking a regular window with some obviously weak ass bars on it by throwing a weighing scale through it. (Who knew?) He also does this when he sees a senator arriving at the facility for election reasons or some shit. Brad remembered that this guy was there when he was trying to escape the succubi earlier and that he looked a little convinced by his story even then, or at least intrigued by it.

Brad babbles his mad tale to him once again while guards are already rushing to collect him. He’s apparently convincing enough that this senator does want to take a look around inside the place though the senator’s assistant isn’t as keen on that idea. The senator starts walking around and he smells something off. His assistant tries to stop him from going into the kitchen and he does so anyway where he finds a bunch of soul sucked staff chopping up the patients for succubus dinner.

The senator is immediately killed by his assistant who reveals that (Surprise!) she was another succ. Brad kills her with a knife while she’s occupied eating the senator then he makes his bloody escape stabbing all the succ slaves along the way until he reaches the senator’s limo where he threatens the driver to take him to a gala that Clayton is supposed to be at. Ghost Host has caught back up with him and manages to suggest (Though ghostly advice) a disguise so he can at least get inside the gala without getting shot. Brad rips off the hairpiece of the limo driver and messes it up a bit to look “raggedy”

Well, simple glasses worked for Superman as a disguise. It’s a fucking comic book, don’t think about it too hard.

Clayton is there being applauding for taking steps towards solving the homeless problem, Brad manages to get in claiming he’s one of the homeless (Who they’ve graciously allowed to attend this fancy thing presumably as examples of “the good work”) She’s going on about opening more homeless shelters and such and then Brad manages to take one of the guns away from one of the guards and riddles Clayton full of bullets like a gangsta.

At this point everyone else is in panic mode running for cover or drawing their own guns on Brad (who has surprisingly not been shot) Ghost Host is absolutely ecstatic though with the one who ordered his death now also dead. He cheers on Brad saying that he’s probably going to get his head blown off, but he’s certainly got his gratitude!

Fortunately for Brad, Clayton turns back into her natural succubus form soon after her death which then prompts a last moment attack by the other succubi in the room and they promptly get filled full of lead for their efforts. For all their plans of secrecy they have a real problem of throwing it away when things don’t go completely according to plan. I mean presumably these ladies COULD have escaped in the mayhem and regrouped in a coven somewhere.

This last bit sparks another congratulation from Ghost Host that Brad managed to also survive all this and then Ghost Host starts disappearing from the real world assuming he’s fulfilled his revenge mission.

You then get a small epilogue which has the new reports stating how Brad is a big star now especially after exposing the succubus plan. However it also shows another succubus elsewhere setting up a new plan involving children. Hey this comic already predicted the whole democrat/lizard people/satanic/pedo conspiracy long before Alex Jones!

Meanwhile Ghost Host finds himself back in Limbo, wondering why he’s still there until a shining light and voice from above calls him out and tells him to stop whining. Ghost Host asks if this is God and God relies that yes it’s him and they call him “Mr. Heaven” up there. He also says that Ghost Host did a good job of getting revenge even if he made a lot of noise along the way. As a reward he gets his own condo in heaven. Turns out God is just as snarky and wisecracking as Ghost Host.

Last scene is Ghost Host ascending to heaven asking if he can host his own game show up there.

Fin.

I remember liking this story a lot when I was a teenager, mostly due to all the blood and gore in it naturally. Upon the long “older” look on it now, yeah I still don’t mind it, though some of the stuff in it would probably be considered really “Red Pill” nowadays and spark wokie outrage. Which if anything makes it more amusing.

There isn’t a single main female character that ISN’T a soul sucking succubus! They’re ALL preying upon a bunch of nerds, lonely dudes and even dumb Chads for their evil conspiracy. No man is safe!

Hell, even the one female character that doesn’t start out as a succubus, Janice from the second issue, falls into the whole thing of “Not appreciating a good guy and going for the more masculine Chad type" (Though not completely stereotypical since he is still a fucking nerd working with computers, he’s just got the “jock looks”) Later of course she turns into a succubus or as the incel crowd might say her natural form. Lol.

All the main male protagonists in it are fairly noble or don’t have any major flaws other than maybe being a little slow on what these ladies REALLY have in store for them. Hell the last one who survives is called BRAD, just a few letters away from Chad, coincidence? Of course not!

So yeah I kind of get the idea that the guy who wrote this one MIGHT have had a bad relationship break up around that time or in the past. (Maybe several) Probably was cursing women the entire time he was writing it, but hey it all makes for a good story right?

Or at least more entertaining ones. Besides once again, it’s a fucking comic book, getting triggered over something like that is silly.

I'd say the bigger story problem was the Ghost Host's revenge plan since as I mentioned a few times he really is going in blind and just assuming the succubi are behind it for most of the story. Of course his hunch paid off, but it was pretty random how the senator just decided to blab about it at the right time he heard it.

Seems like there was the whole "dead guy getting revenge so he could rest in peace" idea, but then the main writer just wanted to make something about these scheming succubitches. Well I guess it worked out if a little slap dash at the end.

Alright that’s it for the main course of the first arc. Next post will be the short stories and then we’ll move on to the second half of this RIP series.

So the first issue of RIP didn’t actually have an additional short story in it. Maybe they hadn’t decided yet if the entire comic was going to be dedicated to their main tale. Guess they decided that the comic needed a bit of variety.

Onward to the short stories.

Shelf Life

Yep, when you wake up as just a head in a jar in an empty room, you know you’re fucked.

So Dr. Jeremy wakes up in a pretty horrible situation though he’s more confused than scared. The main thing he’s wondering about is why there are no technicians around or anyone for that matter. He tries to speak and finds that he is able as the machine he’s connected to does some sort of voice synthesizer, so he probably sounds all cool and robotic which is at least one plus. 

He’s also confused on why the hell he’s awake when they were supposed to only do that when they’d have a body to give him. 

“For 5 mill, they could have at least given me a clock.”

You get a small flashback of when he was still in one piece and talking to the media one last time. He mentions that he’s liquidated all his assets and heading straight to Cryonics Inc. to get frozen because he’s got incurable brain cancer. When asked why he’s just getting his head frozen he says that the 5 mill will easily cover his head AND give him some bonus contingency options! 

And also in the future if medicine has advanced in a way to cure his brain cancer then it will easily be able to give him a new body too.

I gotta say right now that this is an incredibly optimistic idea on the part of the doctor, in fact it’s optimistic to the point of retarded. Well he did have brain cancer I suppose.

He starts trying to think about other things from the past because his current situation is hellish. Soon a man enters the room by the name of Darv. His real name is actually longer like a Mexican which he probably is since there’s a “Vasquez” in part of it when he give it out, but his mestizo status isn’t really important other than how mixed race everyone is in the FUTURE.

Jeremy asks what’s going on and all that, and Darv explains to him that there are no doctors or anything like that around in this facility. Dar is the only “caretaker” of the place and that 90 years have passed. Jeremy is a little surprised that it took that long to cure him, but Darv mentions that they cured him 40 years ago. So now Jeremy figures that they don’t have the medical means of giving him a new body, though Darv says that giving him a new body is entirely possible. However 5 mill doesn’t buy what it used to buy in the 90s, the US dollar crashed hard in 2022 and now America is a source of cheap labor for the rest of the world and its paying off a HUGE fucking national debt. (Always interesting to see what doom and gloom old scifi tales predict. Huge national debt is always a safe bet though) so he’s going to now need another 200 MILLION to get one. 

Jeremy asks how the hell he’s supposed to raise that amount while he’s a head in a jar, Darv mentions there’s a reporter waiting to see him and maybe he should talk to her. Lacking any other plan, Jeremy agrees.

The news lady is black, but she’s got the last name “Mckinlev” (More race mixing, Jeremy’s the last pure white guy lol) She asks him how he feels about being the pioneer of legalized suicide, mass freezing, and state sponsored euthanasia. (Wait, I thought suicide was always legal, I mean even if it wasn’t what are they going to do, give you the death penalty?) Also that hundreds of others followed his lead. 

Jeremy soon learns that while he was the first frozen head, he wasn’t the first to be awakened. There’s already been about ten others before him. The first one did the best since she was the first to wake up and tap into the whole history thing so she got a body. The second guy who woke up did alright and he just barely got a new body, by the third one nobody gave a shit anymore, just another head in a jar. (Yeah they just let them die, lol)

So he mentions he’s the first head frozen, which she says sure but it’s not worth 200 million. He mentions that he was one of the best neurosurgeons in the world (Well if you were so great, why couldn’t you cure your own brain cancer?) and her response is yeah all that shit’s done by robots now that don’t make errors or at least for rich folks and he’s 90 years out of date anyway. And it’s no use playing the history angle because the other heads already tapped that well dry. Plus the new generation of SUPER ZOOMERS are stuck paying off all this debt and don’t like hearing about the old days about how people had it easy. (Okay pretty much nailed that prediction)

Jeremy begs her to raise the money and she’s like this isn’t Lithuania (Lol, okay they threw that one in there just to be absurd) Americans don’t have a shitload of money anymore, but she’ll see what she can do.

With the reporter leaving, Darv mentions he’ll be on his way too. Jeremy asks how much time he has left and Darv mentions with the way the economy is looking, six days. Best not to think about it too much.

So besides feeling hatred towards Darv since he sees him a smug bastard, Jeremy spends the next six days thinking about all the cool shit he used to be able to do when he had a body. Eat delicious food, fuck his model girlfriend, enjoy his convertible sports car, etc. He’s going out of his mind which is extra bad since that’s about all he has. 

Six days pass and the only reason Jeremy knows that is because Darv comes back to shut his machine off. Jeremy is pissed saying he’s got the right to live, but Darv says it’s really nothing personal, it’s just how economics works and that he won’t feel a thing.

Just then Mckinlev comes rushing in saying she’s managed to raise 20 million and put it into Jeremy’s account so to take his hand of the button. Jeremy asks how long will it take for her to raise the rest, which now pisses off Mckinlev that it was lucky that she managed to raise that much for him the least he could have done was say thanks. She then leaves saying she’s lost interest so not to bother trying to ask for her help anymore.

Darv mentions he’s pretty busy so he’ll be back to check on Jeremy in about another month and also makes his exit. All of this leaving Jeremy how he started: A head in a jar in an empty room, except now he’s definitely feeling something different than confusion which is a desire to be put out of his misery.

Yep, it’s like a scifi version of Johnny Got His Gun

One thing I do wonder about though regardless of all the other shit going on, is why the hell would they freeze his head with his glasses on? Or did they just put them back on after curing his brain cancer and putting his head in the jar. Maybe that was the extra bonus that his 5 mill bought. (It wasn’t worth it)

Next story…

Power User

Alright this one starts off with a couple in some nice neighborhood, Ben and Sandy. Ben finds a delivery van outside his home and it’s the computer he ordered. 

This one will be getting a few more pictures since I actually thought about posting this whole thing before, but I’ll jump around on the story pics a bit since I’ll still be doing the play by play as it were.

Holy shit, 300 Megabyte Hard Disk AND 16 bit VGA graphics!

I think the most amusing part of this story is the technology aspect since this won’t be the only time in the story where something sounds really advanced, but looking back on it now is of course hilarious.

So as you can see Ben is pretty pre-occupied with his super duper elite home computer to the point where he’s beginning to ignore his girlfriend (Well this one predicted the future a little more accurately in that aspect) The program that he runs called “Runme” doesn’t actually do anything so they head to the movies, but while they’re gone the computer program starts doing stuff and it’s apparent that Ben has installed some sort of primitive AI into his computer which now has on the screen “Use Me”

Cuts to Ben on another day canceling a date with Sandy because he’s busy with his computer. Sandy’s not happy about this and asks what the hell he’s exactly planning on doing with the computer anyway, which is followed by the computer screen saying “Improve Me”

One week later Ben’s making his own power glove (Because fuck Nintendo’s monopoly)

A 1.5 GIGAbyte external hard drive AND a CD rom drive? An optical mouse? Who could dream of such technological wonders?

Surprisingly as pissed as Sandy is about Ben spending all the savings on new computer shit, she’s actually more concerned about what’s going on with him. This manages to snap him out of his autistic computer obsession for a moment, but he tells her she just doesn’t understand which she replies that she is NOT going to let that computer come between them before storming off.

At this point the computer screen now says “Protect Me”. When Ben asks how, the computer responds with “Uninterruptible Power Supply”

So Now Ben’s on the phone with a computer supply place demanding the best power supply they got and that he needs one that supplies power for at least 48 hours regardless of what happens. They explain they got stuff like that, but they’re really expensive, but he doesn’t give a shit, so he orders it. And now the computer screen says “Join Me”

Cut to several days later and Sandy is banging on Ben’s door shouting what’s happened to them, he tells her to go away and that there is no “Us” anymore as things have changed.

And they change even more in a body horror sort of way…

Nigga really understood the WEAKNESS OF HIS FLESH

So despite Ben now cosplaying as one of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Sandy does NOT actually run away in horror, she instead tries to somehow help by getting the wires and shit off of him. Of course she soon realizes it’s no use since he’s fucking fused everything to his body or wrapped it within himself.

All this causes Ben to do is give her a nasty electric shock and tell her she’s obsolete since he’s been upgraded.

Once again Sandy tries to reason with him, but he’s more machine than man at this point…

So…

And that’s how the Borg came to be

Anyway, like I said I was going to post this one on Valentine’s Day, but I went with that other cartoon choice instead which apparently only Cricket bothered to look at because she’s a good daughter.

Also this is the opposite of the succubus story since it proves that not all women are scheming soul sucking monsters, there are good ones out there that are more than willing to ride with you down the path of insanity and beyond. You just gotta find them, don’t give up hope!

Next story...

Communicable

And for this one I’m not really going to bother with pics since it’s more wordy and doesn’t have anything cool like driving a butcher knife through the forearm. In fact this story is rather meh compared to the other two, or at least I always thought so. However, it does have something rather amusing that happens later, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

This starts off with weird little boy called Jack in a doctor’s office and his obviously overbearing mother going on about how he’s got some dreaded disease. The doc tries to calm her down saying he’s not sick and that she overreacts all the time when Jack gets so much as a sniffle. The whole story is told a bit in a “protagonist reflecting about his past” situation

So Jack’s in bed a lot because his mom is a nut job who thinks he’s sick all the time. However, she’s right at least one time when he had a really bad flu during the summer when he was 12. Even the doctor didn’t think he was going to make it. This is when he started to actually hear the germs in his system basically taunting him and wondering if they should kill him or not and humans in general since they just see all of us as cattle.

As he gets older he starts telling others that he “hears the germs” which now makes him just look crazy on top of everything else. His mom is still keeping him in bed a lot. One wonders how the fuck he graduates from high school, let alone college. 

Eventually he goes to work for Vector which is a place that specializes in disease and germ research and Jack apparently is a whiz in the whole gene splicing field. 

What Jack ends up doing is “curing the flu” by splicing some of the flu virus with a cure for it. He mentions it’s a general antidote, but his fellow scientists aren’t so convinced and want more tests done, but he’s already gone ahead and done tests on himself. It doesn’t really explain it, but its assumed that he’s also doing some splicing of his own DNA to get this cure, since well he HAS had every fucking flu under the sun, so he’s actually pretty immune to such things by now or he’s immune enough that he’s more of a “carrier” rather than feeling any effects by them. 

Like I said, it’s all a bit unclear, but he’s trying to “trap” the germs/viruses so he can speak with them and make them understand that humanity aren’t “cattle”.

In any case, while he might be immune to the flu, his closest buddy isn’t and the germs attack him instead and they’re a lot more powerful now. (I should mention there are little places throughout the story where the germs ARE speaking

Thinking that he’s on the right path Jack next wants to do the same thing with fucking AIDS. First thing he hears is AIDS isn’t like the flu since despite how deadly it is it isn’t as communicable so it’s harder to track. Yes, there’s medicine keeping degenerates alive past their expiration date NOW, but back when this was written, full blown AIDS was considered nothing to fuck with (Literally). Jack is undeterred and gets permission from his boss to start experimenting with AIDS.

And yes, you already guessed it, this genius injects himself with the fucking AIDS virus. In fact, it’s sort of suggested that he injected himself with the shit before he even got permission for this project. Meanwhile he’s still got the flu running around in his system that he’s spreading around but not feeling any effects from. 

Combine that with AIDS and he’s managed to now create SUPER AIDS that IS communicable through the fucking air. 

Well he mentions this at some fancy science gathering and his fellow scientist is horrified to learn that Jack’s injected himself with AIDS, though Jack thinks he’s winning somehow. Lol.

With SUPER AIDS now coursing through his body he believes its a situation that “He’s not trapped with SUPER AIDS, SUPER AIDS is trapped with him!” And now they HAVE to talk to him. 

Well that goes about as well as you’d expect, once again meaning not at all.

Cut to the next scene and Jack’s looking pretty damn bad off as he watches TV. His boss calls him up saying his fellow researcher is dead and his family has been quarantined. His boss begins to exclaim that the damn flu cure is what did this, but Jack corrects his boss saying it’s worse than the flu, that it’s AIDS and then says he lost. (No shit, you injected yourself with AIDS you fucktard)

Next he babbles about how he thought the germs couldn’t hear him, but they tricked him because they were listening to everything he was saying. Meanwhile he’s seeing a giant germ face mocking him and saying “cattle” before he passes out.

Shows him next on a bed in the hospital dying of SUPER AIDS. Later the doctor that was checking him out is leaving and mentions to someone else about how he had to order 50 AIDS tests that day. After some back and forth about maybe wearing hazmat suits and the stats for AIDS going up, the doc says that they shouldn’t go overboard with protection since AIDS doesn’t communicate that easily. 

Last scene is the doc wishing his cold would go away and then seeing a black germ face on his windshield saying “cattle”.

And that’s a wrap for that story.

Okay, next post whenever I get around to it will be the second main story arc of the RIP series. Stay tuned! 

Alright this next main story arc is rather meh. In fact I remember when I first read it, I had a hard time staying engaged so this review will be sort of shorter than the first main story arc.

Main premise is its about a cop who gets killed by a serial killer and he comes back from the dead for revenge. Sounds somewhat familiar to the premise to the first arc, but this one has more of a serious tone. And yes while succubitches ripping people to bloody shreds is serious business, you also had a dead game show host making insulting comments on various situations which lightened the mood a bit and gave the comic a sense of fun.

This one has no such fun which doesn’t make it quite as good overall despite dead cops and serial killers running about. Basically like usual I’m going to end up explaining the story and make it sound more entertaining than it actually is. And if it still doesn’t sound entertaining, well I’m working with what I got.

Also this one has no connection whatsoever to the other arc, it’s just another tale of revenge from the grave. Not even set in the same universe since the afterlife seems to work a bit differently here (As I’ll describe later)

Also these had short stories at the end of them too, but like before I’ll do those on a separate post.

RIP Story Arc 5-8: Brasher Avenger of the Dead

Cover already sucks compared to the first four RIPs

So starts off with Brasher tracking a serial killer he’s been hunting for a long time. The serial killer is called the Ten Penny Killer because he kills his victims by hammering in ten penny nails into their skulls, which while a little unique, it's not exactly the most efficient way of killing someone. Naturally this killer is only targeting women because that’s standard operating procedure for serial killers. Not to mention he’s already using an inefficient means of killing his victims, makes sense to pick targets who will be easier to overpower.

Brasher is doing the whole inner monologue in his head about the killer saying how he knows he’s close this time wandering through back alleys. Stumbles upon one dead whore with nails in her head and then there’s a bit elsewhere with some other whore begging for her life on her knees. However, Ten penny’s not moved by promises of free blowjobs and just wants her to shut up and accept the SLAM, which unfortunately for her isn’t a dick in her vertical smile this time but a nail in her head.

Brasher stumbled upon her body too, but apparently ten penny got spooked by Brasher approaching so he didn’t manage to finish the job properly so now she’s just mumbling shit with nails in her skull. Brasher doesn’t get far when he’s ambushed by TP and in a poor showing of his cop training, TP not only gets the upperhand and knocks the gun away, but he also manages to crack Brasher in the skull with his hammer hard enough to incapacitate him.

“Never done a cop before, hell never done a man before. First time for everything.” - Ten Penny Killer discovering his latent homosexuality

So Ten Penny skull fucks Brasher with a nail to his head and everything goes black.

Next it show Brasher getting back up and he’s not really looking any worse for wear. He sees TP not too far away and starts to run after him, a cop car passes the alley causing the killer to hide behind a trash can. Brasher is screaming at the car to stop and then grabs at TP only to find that his arms go right through him.

TP is unaware of any of this and seeing that the coast is clear he runs off leaving Brasher to wonder what the hell is going on. Doesn’t take long though to see he’s fucking dead with nails in his head (And now cops are around his body since it’s a crime scene) and his current form is that of a ghost especially since he’s now floating upward. However, he’s still not exactly convinced, he thinks maybe this is all a dream so he heads home where he meets his mom.

His bald headed young green naked translucent mom. Not sure how he recognized her immediately, but I’m guessing the voice helped.

So he’s wondering why she’s so young or even around because she’s dead. She mentions that he’s dead too and he’s got to accept that so he can move on. She’s even here to guide him to the afterlife. He still isn’t convinced, but after a quick look into the morgue he realizes “Yep, I’m dead.” and promptly turns into a bald naked translucent green person too. He tries one last effort to enter his own body, but he’s unable to, which just makes him madder since he’s been able to go through other shit.

His main anger stems from not getting the Ten Penny Killer, but also that TP got him instead (Nobody likes to lose). So he goes to the afterlife with his mom which is a weird place. It’s a barren alien looking landscape where all the other green naked spirits join together like a DNA helix going upward to the sky. Joining this spirit centipede links you and everyone gains everyone else’s knowledge and experiences and all that other commie faggotry.

Like I said, the ghost/afterlife thing here is working a lot differently than it did in the other story arc.

However, at some point the spirits separate since some of them are experiencing past trauma of their lives which usually ended violently and they can’t let go. These spirits go to a giant bramble bush area. Brasher at this point becomes angry enough that he breaks free and gets the attention of “God” who is just this humanoid shaped being of pure light.

Brasher explains he doesn’t belong with them because they’re all too afraid to die, but he’s too MAD to die. He WANTS to go back to KILL…but only other killers, he clarifies.

He then goes on about how he also wants to help those too afraid to do anything about their situation and “set them free” so that they can move on to the better location of the afterlife and no longer have the trauma. He reasons that there can’t be any harm in killing murderers early so they don’t send innocents to the afterlife early.

Unless murder and murderers are part of the “design” and if that’s the case, Brasher says he feels like killing God. (Who has been completely silent this whole)

God says that murder isn’t part of the natural design so Brasher then comes to the conclusion that there’s an opposite player in this “great game” that perverts it with murder and shit, to which God replies that this is true. (The Devil duh)

So God says Brasher is going to lose everything he gained during his time in the afterlife, but he can return to earth to carry out his self appointed mission. So he goes back, but he’s still in his green ghost form and can’t actually do anything physical, however he soon learns he can possess matter and animate it.

He goes to the butcher shop and builds a body out of meat to dig up his old body and repossess it. Seems like it would have been easier to possess a dead one from the fucking morgue or a funeral home, but then again you don’t get the chance to do something like walking around in a body made up of pork chops, spare ribs and sausage links everyday.

Now in his old body, Brasher vows he’s going to make ALL the killers pay so they all better watch the fuck out.

(Also this whole time his real name is Ralph Needham, but he actually becomes Jake Brasher when he comes back from the dead)

Next Issue

One of many covers which will show Brasher in a various state of anguish of some sort

So now Brasher’s in his dead body drinking in a bar and not feeling any of the effects of the alcohol (Negative or positive) since surprise, he’s fucking dead. He gets pissed about that and leaves with several of the other patrons glad he’s gone because he was stinking up the place smelling like formaldehyde.

Realizing he’s gotta do something about his stench based on what he’s overhearing people say (Since he can’t smell himself) he heads to the store to buy a shitload of cologne, or rather he doesn’t buy it so much as he just threatens to bust the clerk in the mouth and takes the bag of stuff. He’s already pissed about the clerk making jokes about how he smells anyway.)

He also realizes at this point he really didn’t think a lot of this through since he doesn’t have any money and he’s lucky that in the bar they were just glad he was gone before they asked for any.

So as much as he’d like to stay at his old place, he really can’t so he sits his body near his apartment like he’s one of the winos and goes in as a ghost to pick up his hidden stash of money and a few extra clothes. He finds his superintendent trying to ransack the place, but he scares him away by throwing shit at him like a poltergeist.

He gets his stuff and returns to his body to begin his search. He’s trying to keep his mind off his girlfriend Jenny which then cuts to her at work and being all sad. She’s apparently a social worker and a rare one where she actually believes she can make a difference with the scum walking into the place.

Cuts back to Brasher getting a new place and decking it out like and office, he also cusses out his landlord after he mentions laying the aftershave on a little thick. He starts wondering how to resolve the smell thing, but gets distracted thinking about Jenny again and how they were complete opposites and how he’s going to get Ten Penny. (You also get to see the big ass hole in his forehead which he covers up with his hair)

Cut to Ten Penny who is peacefully washing dishes in his boring suburban house that looks like the rest on the block. He’s hearing a voice that’s telling him to go out and kill someone tonight, but he’s tired and says he doesn’t have to do it every night. This voice keeps goading him on which even Ten Penny mentions that he’s only doing it because the voice won’t leave him alone and what does it want from him.

The voice says that it just needs a favor every now and then and that another kill would make up for the cop. Ten Penny doesn’t understand since he killed the cop, but the voice points out that it wasn’t a SHE. The voice suggests killing the cop’s wife and if not his wife then his girlfriend. Ten Penny says for all anyone knows the cop could have had a boyfriend to which the voice says it doesn’t really matter who he targets as long as the next kill is a SHE. He gets a special nail because he’s going to do something special tonight.

(Well it's the horror genre, if women aren't soul sucking monsters, they're obviously going to be hapless victims)

Cut to Brasher buying a car (and stinking up the car dealership with his cologne) and heading to the grave of one of TPs victims (Ellen). He starts questioning the grave until finally a green naked ghost girl comes out wondering why he’s disturbing her. He explains the situation that he’s trying to get revenge and she should help. Meanwhile the grave keeper thinks Brasher is some nut and calls the cops on him.

Ellen helps a little bit by giving some very minor details of what she can remember, meanwhile Brasher has to make a quick getaway due to the cops arriving, but they see enough to recognize that they just saw Ralph Needham, but that it couldn’t have been him since he’s dead. Then Ellen pops up briefly to say it was him before disappearing and now they freak out since they’re right near her grave and she was the woman TP killed that same night.

Speaking of TP, it shows him picking up some hitchhiking chick with a new wave punk hair style, but then TP himself is still rocking the glorious MULLET, the 80s weren’t quite over yet!

Brasher meanwhile does something silly like going to see his girlfriend and lets her know that its really him writing on her mirror with her lipstick. He manages to communicate to her that they could even see each other again though he’s not sure if that’s a great idea since things would be very different. Jenny however is down for it, but Brasher doesn’t have any more time to explain since he hears the police scanner he bought going off about another murder so he leaves.

Cut to the chick TP picked up, or rather just her head nailed to a tree. This is a bit different than his usual MO since he’s never chopped up these women before. He’s getting worse and the last scene shows TP saying how he made that last one special and how if she’s going to hitchhike like a big whore then the pillbug can crawl in her ears. (TP obviously doesn’t know shit about pillbugs since you more often find them under rocks and damp places like a rotting log. A dry healthy tree trunk would be more likely to have ants or beetles hanging around it)

Next issue

Well this one at least has a bit more going with a dead hooker on the front rather than just Brasher looking angry at something

So Brasher’s back at his office trying to figure out where TP could be lamenting the fact that despite his ghostly powers increasing, he’s no closer to his goal. Just then another naked green ghost girl comes floating in, Brasher thinks that it’s another TP victim, however she states that she got killed by a different guy called the Black River Killer with a clothesline.

Brasher figures she wants his help so she can get off the bramble bush and move on, but she says she’s in a worse place than the brambles. Where she’s at is complete blackness and that she’s “Soul dead.” However she was still clever enough to make it back the earthly realm since she learned what Brasher was doing. Brasher doesn’t really want to just drop chasing TP to go chasing after BRK though, but this ghost points out that TP, BRK and others like them are all just merely “soldiers” controlled by a greater entity that wants to bring more suffering into the world.

She makes her ghostly exit leaving Brasher to inner monologue and think about a bunch of shit (Including Jenny again) but the main one is heading over to the hospital where the blowjob girl TP nailed that night he nailed Brasher is still alive in a coma. (Since y’know Brasher interrupted the process)

While he can’t speak to her in meatbag form, he can certainly speak to her in naked green ghost form so he plops his body in a chair and exits it since her spirit is out of her, but still tethered to her meat body.. She’s actually pissed at him for either not getting there in time before she got nailed or not arriving a little later so TP could at least kill her and she wouldn’t be stuck in a coma.

He tells her to just move on then, but she’s a bit too scared to do that still. He questions her about that night and she does manage to give him some vital info he didn’t have before. He thanks her and is about to leave, but she asks him how the afterlife is and he gives his opinion on it and how weird the place is, which doesn’t sound very reassuring to her. There’s some back and forth about how she helped him and how he hasn’t been very helpful to her, but he says the only way she’s going to find out if the afterlife will or will not be peaceful for her is to just go there.

(She’s mainly scared since she was a whore in life so she figures “The gates” to a pleasant afterlife will be barred for her, but I mean she was providing a vital service of keeping at least some of the incel levels lower, I mean like that’s a good thing right?)

Cut to TP watching TV and laughing about the reports on his latest kill, but The Voice isn’t thrilled with him, even calling him “Eddie-boy” (Still calling him TP for this review though) Despite the fact that the Voice said it didn’t care what victim he nailed as long as it was a SHE, the Voice is now bitching that TP didn’t target some SHE close to the cop. TP gets just as angry saying the cop wasn’t married, but the Voice once again says he probably had a girlfriend and TP needs to get on that shit right away and he’ll help him directly in finding her.

Cut to Brasher visiting said girlfriend where he proceeds to have a talk about the whole fucking nature of good and evil, the grand plan of life, the universe and everything and a whole bunch of other shit. He then senses an evil presence watching the pair of them, but it goes away. Still it’s enough to set Brasher into action that he really needs to go find TP quick and stop fucking around. Jenny mentions that she wants to die so she can be with Brasher, but he’s pretty adamant that she should NOT want that. (Especially since he hasn’t exactly passed on to the afterlife anyway)

Cut back to TP who says he found his target, but Brasher was there and he doesn’t know how the hell he is since he knows he killed him. The Voice however tells him that doesn’t matter since he’s got it on his side. TP is now shook up about this whole situation causing the Voice to pressure him even more into now not just killing Jenny but ALSO killing Brasher again. TP says “He’s gonna!” “Yeah, when?” is the Voice’s answer. TP mentions he’ll kill the girl first to “cripple” him then he’ll kill the cop.
 
So now the comic goes into another Brasher monologue where he’s pondering if serial killers are “born” like that from the start or are they “Chosen” by an evil force. He mentions a lot of them have similar traits meaning maybe they are all connected via evil entity.

Now I’m not sure if this was intentional or just limited artistry talent, but I should mention that A LOT of the main male characters DO look similar. Brasher, TP and I haven’t gotten to his bit yet, but the Black River Killer are all drawn similar as far as their faces go (Just different hair styles/colors). It’s sort of suggested throughout that Brasher has similar traits as TP, he just goes about it in a “positive” way. A sort of neat way of connecting this in story theory I suppose.

Now the reason why it might have just been limited talent is due to the fact that you also see other male characters with similar faces to Brasher. I sort of remember when first reading the series getting confused a bit on who exactly was who at least once. I suppose these all could have been hidden serial killers as well though, but anyway let’s move on.

So while Brasher is thinking about all this it cuts to a forest type area where a man in an arm cast has a broke down car and a girl riding a bike stops to help him. Of course when she looks in the hood of the car, she gets a blow to the back of the head and stuffed into the trunk. (BRK is obviously modeled after a combo of the real Green River Killer and Ted Bundy, even has Ted’s hair style)

TP meanwhile is on his way to kill Jenny, posing as a handyman come to fix her pipes. He claims the superintendent sent him and even when she calls to check, the super at first claims he didn’t and then you see him change his story when the evil entity’s eyes are upon him. (I think this was just evil god mind control powers rather than the super being connected to the serial killers though)

Brasher then gets a vision of the BRK finishing off his latest victim in the woods with a clothesline, then he realizes the evil entity is taunting him since he shows TP at Jenny’s home next causing Brasher to leave immediately in naked green ghost form since it’s faster.

Final issue

Oh good we get a close up of Brasher snarling for the last comic. Hadn't gotten enough of that yet.

Comic opens up with a close up of Brasher’s ghost snarling and vowing vengeance, etc.

He’s off to save Jenny, but when he gets to her apartment door he gets transported to BRK’s cabin in the woods. After realizing where he is, he stumbles upon a dead body in a bathtub which turns out to be the lady that first confronted him about BRK. She appears in ghost form explaining that she’ll be moving under the floorboards soon now that he’s recently killed some new girl. Brasher takes a look and sees a shitload of rotting dead ladies prompting tub girl to ask now that he’s here is he going to do something about it.

BRK enters the cabin where upon he falls through some weakened floorboards, though its sort of implied Brasher just pulled him through since he’s apparently got the power to directly affect things in the physical realm even as a ghost. In keeping with this power, Brasher strangles BRK with his own clothesline.

Meanwhile TP and Jenny are running around her apartment in typical horror movie style.

Brasher then starts wondering how he even got here and that maybe Jenny wasn’t in danger after all and it was the Demon/Voice that was just fucking with him the whole time.

However, Tub Girl then reveals that the Demon DID send him here. Brasher doesn’t understand why it would just to kill its own puppets, to which Tub Girl says, maybe it saw something in Brasher that it liked better and then points out that it didn’t occur to him that SHE was also sent by the demon too saying that not all murder victims are necessarily innocent.

Even without being marked by hell/demons surely some folks are just evil assholes by pure chance. Then Tub Girl starts making out with BRK who is now also a naked green ghost. Tub Girl mocks Brasher about Jenny before he leaves angry (His default setting) through the cabin door.

Cut back to Ten Penny who is just getting home ranting about how the Demon better be finally happy after all the shit he went through. Brasher is there at his house and recognizes that it’s TP, not to mention he sees the body of the woman who’s head he cut off earlier laying on his bed in a dress.

Brasher takes TP’s own hammer and some nails and heads toward TP who now thinks this is his Demon boss that’s pissed at him for talking back so much. He starts begging for his life and claiming he followed all his orders and finally asks “What sort of Demon are you?”

Which is just lol. Even if this wasn’t Brasher, everyone should know demons killing their own servants is pretty damn common, but TP wasn’t exactly the brightest anyway.

Brasher nails TP like he got nailed, finally getting revenge. He then adds a cherry on top when TP becomes a naked green ghost and Brasher claims he’s his guide to the afterlife and leads him straight to the bramble bush where some of his victims were. It’s not good for him.

Now I’m not entirely certain if that last bit was a line Brasher crossed, but his mom appears and says what has he done. Even doing what he did to a killer isn’t good. He tries to explain he didn’t know what came over him and God appears. Brasher says he’s still not ready to die yet and this is just a temporary stop, but then God says he can’t die now and he’s no longer allowed here.

Brasher then decends into another realm of the afterlife which is presumably the Hell area. Lot of reds and blacks (The colors, not the people though I’m sure a lot of both are there too) Lot of blood and bodies, in fact the evil entity behind all the serial killer shit is made up of a bunch of bodies sitting in a giant pool of blood.

After a bit of back and forth with the Devil as it were, Brasher wakes up in his old body and goes running over to Jenny’s apartment where he of course finds her dead with nails in her head. His mom appears again saying that she’s gone forever to the place he can never go to since she was innocent and he isn’t.

It doesn’t matter if he only killed other killers, its all part of THE EVIL ONE’S plans. Y’know it’s the whole stare into the abyss and the abyss looks back and becoming the monster to kill the other monsters thing. She disappears and you see Jenny now as naked green ghost in some golden paradise area with Brasher’s mom trying to console her that she’ll never see Brasher again.

Cut to the last page with Brasher inner monologuing placing flowers on Jenny’s grave. He then makes some vow that if he can’t have Jenny then he’s just going to spend the rest of his undead life tracking down serial killers because well, what else has he got to do now?

Last panel is him leaving the cemetery with a newspaper in the gutter saying two serial killers are dead and him saying that he guesses he belongs here in hell.

Fin.

And that’s a wrap for that story arc.

Upon a second look at it (Because I never did bother reading it after the first time until now) there were a few okay ideas here but I think the main problem is well I just didn’t care for Brasher himself and that’s bad since he’s practically the main focal point of the story arc. Something about him just wasn’t very likable and maybe that was the point that he wasn’t really that great of a person though you don’t really learn much about him in general other than he’s obsessed with catching killers and serious all the time. And hell, I’m even perfectly fine with snarling main protagonists who are just constantly angry all the time, but I dunno Brasher just didn’t pull it off.

Even TP who is a scumbag serial killer was a little more interesting to me due to him arguing with his demon boss all the time.

Again, I think there was an implication that Brasher was just another serial killer, but he just targeted other serial killers. So sort of like an undead Dexter (long before Dexter was even a thing) Granted I never got into Dexter after the first season either. I dunno, the concept of a “good serial killer” has never appealed I suppose. If I’m going to watch/read something from the prospective of a serial killer, just go all the way evil on it. Or at least Hannibal Lector level where even if he does do a few pet the dog moments he’s still ultimately eating folks.

Well that’s my opinion on it anyway.

Next up will be the short stories within this arc of the comics, which as usual are mostly better than the main story. Stay tuned!

Alright the last round up of short stories for RIP before moving on to the next TSR comic. Unlike the main story arc, the short one shots are all pretty good.

11 Stories

So this one starts off with a guy named Gary jumping off a building hoping it will be quick and painless because after all how long can it be to fall 11 STORIES to your death?

Starts out in Vietnam where he’s stolen some dude’s lucky talisman for shits and giggles. Doesn’t really say why other than he’s just being a dick. The owner of it is wondering where it is since his grandmother gave it to him, but Gary says they don’t have time to look for it because it’s time for patrol. 

The patrol gets ambushed and Gary is the only survivor. He realizes that the talisman is the real deal so he’s definitely going to keep it now.

This is where the “gimmick” of the story kicks in because it will cut back to him falling after each flashback with the mention of how close he is to the pavement. The 10th story in particular is probably the best one.

Nothing like completing your war crime checklist

After Nam, he mentions “mellowing out” a bit since he didn’t hurt as many people on purpose. So he’s doing stuff like fucking women and telling them their pregnancy isn’t his problem, beating up black people and blackmailing college faculty in order to get recommendations.

Later he joins a law firm (Because of course this scum was going to become a lawyer) where he ends up spreading rumors about one of the law partners (Thomas) being THE BIG GAY thanks to buddies Gary had in the newspaper business (Remember this is still about the late 70s not the age of darkness we live now where something like that is celebrated). Now this bit isn’t quite confirmed, since his gay shit supposedly happened 12 years ago, but you know what they say, suck one dick and you’re a cocksucker 4LYFE. He ends up leaving town and the firm.

This creates two opportunities for Gary. One he manages to take a junior partner position with the firm since Thomas is gone and two, Thomas was going out with the other senior partner’s daughter Lucy. She’s pretty distraught about all this, but of course Gary’s right there to comfort her so much that he ends up marrying her instead.

By the seventh story, he focuses on the one “good thing” he did which was his son and it shows him being wholesome for a change. Still hasn’t changed though, except now he’s got slightly more purpose for being ruthless so he can make a good life for his son.

Next stories he’s going over more bad shit he’s done like bribing judges to win cases and finally get senior partner. Which soon results in just taking over the firm completely when he ends up murdering Lucy’s dad because he won’t back an investment on a new office building. 

Shows him next having thugs scare an old lady into giving up her home so he can build this damn building, then he renames it after Lucy’s dad on top of all of it. “Daddy would be so proud!” Lucy says.

So by the third story, he starts mentioning all the shit going down because that’s the day the talisman’s power finally wore out. 

Shows Lucy leaving him for Thomas of all people since apparently he still loves her (And probably needs a beard to fend off the gay rumors still going around). The new building isn’t up to code and the safety inspectors are breathing down his neck and worst of all the doctors call and tell him his son has got cancer.

Next story he’s tracked down the grandmother of the guy who originally owned the talisman, offering her a shitload of money to recharge it. However, she knows that he was the one who took it which resulted in her grandson’s death. Gary tries to say the Viet Cong killed him and adds a threat that she better recharge it or else.

Grandma isn’t moved by the threat of death and says that Gary is going to experience retribution for the last 20 years he’s been a fucking asshole. He breaks her neck, but there is no stopping this retribution. 

Cuts to the last story before he splats on the pavement, and it shows him climbing the stairs to go jump off the roof thinking that the best days are over and there’s no point in living through even more shit that’s coming for him, so better to end it now. He can still call the final shot.

However, it ends exactly how it begins, with him saying he hopes this is quick and painless because after all how long can it take to fall 11 STORIES to your death?

All of which implies that Gary is reliving this jump over and over again in some sort of hell.

Next story I’m going to skip since I’m going to show it entirely in a following post because it really is a tale where a picture is worth a 1000 words. (Not much text at all in it anyway) so we’ll move on to the next one which is actually a two parter that was in the RIP 7 and 8 issues. (Which I’ll just review altogether of course)

Junkyard Dogs

This one starts off at a retirement home with some old people and their caretakers sitting outside. One of them Caleb is complaining about how shit the place is, while his blind buddy John knows the place is shit, but he’s a little tired of Caleb bitching all the time. Doesn’t help that their home is half a mile from a garbage dump.

One of the caretakers mentions that some folks from the university are spreading some experimental organisms there to try to breakdown the garbage quicker and turn it into fertilizer.

Well experimental organisms in a horror comic, this isn’t going to cause anything bad at all! (Shows toxic sludge doing its usual thing in the horror genre)

The conversation turns to animals and in particular John’s dead dog Forsythe that John considered to be more than a pet, but rather an extension of himself and losing him was even worse than when he lost his eye sight in the first place. Caleb bitches a bit more and then goes inside.

Just then a man is running towards the home telling them ALL to get inside because “it” is right behind him, they’re confused at first until some mutant dog tackles the man and starts eating him.

The old folks and caretakers aren’t completely helpless and are trying to fight, but nothing is hurting it. An old lady hits it with an axe and Caleb even shoots it multiple times with a shotgun, but when one of them throws ammonia on the dog, that’s what dissolves and kills the thing.

They see more coming and get inside the house trying to figure out what else to use against them. Caleb grabs a bottle of whiskey tossing it at a dog from the window thinking it might have the same effect, but it doesn’t until one of the caretakers Bill tosses a flame on the dog as well. Unfortunately he accidentally lights himself on fire as well needing to employ STOP DROP and ROLL. 

Blind John then hears one of the dogs barking and recognizes it. It’s Forsythe. Blind John goes out despite Caleb trying to stop him, but it’s fine and Forsythe recognizes his old master. So he marks the territory with his acid pee which tells all the other dogs to stay away so they all leave (Including Forsythe) 

So Caleb says they should try to warn the town that a pack of toxic dogs are heading that way, unfortunately due to Forsythe marking the territory, he pissed on a telephone pole which loses structural integrity and falls over, not to mention the car is broken from the start of the story.

Meaning Caleb and Blind John take a double bicycle and pedal their way to town. Caleb thinks this is a bad idea given that John is blind, but John mentions he’s still stronger so it’ll help if he’s pedaling too and he wants to get Forsythe back anyway. They conclude that since the ammonia killed one and they piss acid, their body chemistry is probably a base so that’s their weakness.

(This is where part 2 starts)

The toxic dog mutants are now in town and the first thing they do is kill a bunch of kids and old people at the park. Caleb and John are still cycling to the town with Caleb wondering how many dogs their are since he sees even more of them, John mentions it’s going to depend on how many animal bodies were in the landfill since that’s where they unceremoniously dumped Forsythe and if he’s back then that’s where they’re all coming from. (Oddly just the dogs, no cats or rodents?)

Meanwhile the toxic doggos are ripping the shit out of the townies. There’s bloody body parts all over the streets and the town is pretty fucked. 

Whoops!

At this point Caleb and John have made it into town and John asks what’s it like in town and Caleb tells him that he doesn’t want to know. The dogs however have had their feast so they start heading home for the night. John shouts for Forsythe to come back, but Caleb tells him he doesn’t want him in the condition he’s in. Caleb is interested in getting some medical help for the wounded back at the old folk’s home. 

The clinic is overcrowded with the town’s wounded however so they’re not heading over there anytime soon. Meanwhile some militia type gathers up a mob with a bunch of guns because they’re convinced that good old American FIREPOWER will win the day. Caleb just shakes his head at this idiocy and heads over to the chemical plant which wasn’t even locked due to the panic. 

Caleb finds a tanker truck filled with corrosive chemicals that he thinks will put the dogs down for good. He and John then drive over to the landfill where the militia group are and losing the battle spectacularly against the dogs. Caleb grabs the truck’s hose and tells John to just keep feeding him the line, but John is attacked by a particularly large mutant dog which swipes at him. Fortunately Forsythe intervenes and saves John, but the large dog cut the hose with its claws. 

Caleb tells John to get himself and everyone else out of the landfill because he’s got a plan B. John shouts that his friend is about to do something drastic and those that are still able to manage to get out of the landfill before Caleb makes the ultimate sacrifice of just driving the entire truck into the toxic dump area where the dogs were making their home. They’re all dissolved back into biosludge which then causes the militia leader to say he wished he’d thought of that, to which John says he wishes that HE’D thought of that too. 

Cut to the aftermath showing the old age home which is now named after Caleb. It’s quieter there now without him, but John says Caleb went out loud and useful just the way he wanted. John then mentions how once someone’s a part of you, they’re never really gone. 

Final scene shows John saying “Isn’t that right Forsythe?” and shows Forsythe near a bowl of bloody bones and what looks to be a child’s head.

No seriously, the story ends with the old folks looking at their mutant pet doggo who has clearly just eaten a kid. Look at this shit. 

I like how the dead kid’s head displays an expression of terror as the jaws of an abomination was the last thing he saw.

Now granted John can't see that his wholesome doggo is still eating folks, but surely the other non-blind old folks could tell him, but then again a lot of them probably got put in that shithole by their own ungrateful offspring, so they might be like fuck those kids (and the townies in general) anyway.

Alright, next post will be last story of the RIP series.

Alright here's the last short story and appropriately titled:

Goodbye Cruel World

Gotta love it.

Anyway, next up I'll probably review the Intruder series next when I get around to it. It's another one where the main story isn't that great, but it does have a couple of good short stories, one of which is even CYOA related. Stay tuned!

I probably found this one a lot funnier than it was meant to be.

I mean that's why I liked it. 

I think it's intended to be dark humor. I thought it was hilarious how the idea of "think of how your suicide will affect others" is taken to an extreme, and no one gets away from karmic consequences from all the people they got killed. Looks like Walter is next to improve his life only to get killed because of some other suicidal person lol

Going to do what I’ve been doing which is going over the main arc first and then following up with the short stories that were running throughout the comic series.

So this next comic is called Intruder and as I mentioned I didn’t actually get into this one from the start the reason being it didn’t look like anything I’d be into and also something as simple as the cover didn’t catch my attention.

Now if the first issue had a cover like this:

Much more eye catching

Well that’s why I ended up buying it and I probably had money burning a hole in my pocket at the time or something.

The first arc of Intruder which I never read had a 4 issue arc, this one covered the remainder of the series at 6 issues. Eight to ten issues was usually about the number of what these TSR comics ended up being. I think RIP had the shortest with 8. 

Now despite this one having six I’m actually not going to spend much time reviewing since…well it’s a slog to go through. Or rather the protagonist is sort of fucking annoying to the point that it makes the overall story intolerable.

I didn’t like Jake Brasher much for being unfun, but holy shit even he wasn’t as angsty as Eric Corbin. All the dude practically does is cry and run throughout the comic. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What exactly is Intruder about? Well it was supposed to be a comic about tying all of TSR’s “worlds” together. Different planes of existence, alternate dimensions, etc. That sort of thing. Eric is a scientist who sort of stumbles upon all this and gets into adventures, except he’s sort of a big pussy about it. 

Now he is a scientist and I get that not everyone can be Gordon fucking Freeman, but he’s just really not what I want to see in a protagonist. Probably about the bravest thing he does do is his wife gets captured in the first arc during his battle with the main villain in it, Master of Chaos and he does try to get her back and he even ends up killing the Master of Chaos. Of course I didn’t read any of that arc and can only go by the brief summaries I’ve seen. It is entirely possible Eric’s personality was written a bit braver than it is in this arc, but from a quick check and it does say it had the same writer from the start.

And granted there’s a lot of situations where he doesn’t really have much option except run and he’s not a action hero type, but holy shit he could have at least borrowed a bit of Brasher’s stoicism (When he wasn’t being ANGRY of course). By the time of this second arc Eric is already spent one story arc as a plane hopping “Intruder” and has killed a major villain called The Master of Chaos. One would think he’d be used to having experienced all sorts of horrors by now rather than screaming and crying a lot.

So why did I even continue to buy it? Well as usual the short stories are pretty good, plus the main story is another case of there being a good idea there, but the protagonist sucks a lot. (Plus I was always a bit of completionist) 

Well might as well get on with talking about the actual story a bit.

It starts off with Eric still looking for his wife, he hops to some world with a huge fucking library. In fact this is “Alexandria” and it’s basically keeping a book of every plane, world and dimension in existence. He finds a book about the Master of Chaos and he’s puzzled since he knows he’s dead, but upon opening it he learns that the Master of Chaos started off not too dissimilar from him. Cowardly blue alien with a big head (Long before Megamind) and he was even trying to save his wife (He fails harder since she actually dies rather than merely missing). He ended up killing some ruthless overlord that had lots of fancy powers too. 

And then as an Intruder, CM starts acquiring more abilities soon after and he starts using these powers to entertain various folks and generally be a fun person that other people enjoy since he’s got lots of interesting stories to tell.

But as fun as that all is, it’s NOTHING compared to the amount of big fun you can have being a complete dick to people on a massive scale and that’s exactly what happens. Absolute power and all that, CM starts becoming an asshole and doing all the shit that entails until his story ends with Eric busting a cap in his ass.

Eric then sees another book, which now follows the life of the evil overlord that CM killed during his time as an Intruder. Similar story and ends the same way. Eric goes through several of these books and it basically is the same tale just with a different guy. Eric goes into the first of many of his screaming panic fits:

“No, it can’t be! The universe can’t just run on cruelty and blood! There are other paths besides brutality and madness! What of free will? I will choose my own destiny!” 

Apparently this guy never heard of Lovercraft.

Well you can’t take away a man’s right to be a big pussy so that’s basically what happens through the comic arc. Eric going around looking for his wife and running a lot in panic. Now there is a major ongoing threat while he’s looking for his wife and that is, he hops into a dimension where humanity is extinct or practically extinct and he’s pretty much stuck in it for the entirety of most of this arc.

Now here’s an interesting part of the story. 

In THIS universe humanity was like some warrior race of bad ass conquerors that had a galaxy spanning empire. However they bump into another race called the Tzara who are definitely a warrior race just by their appearance alone:

Being a race of “philosopher kings” was never an option

Naturally a war broke out and after laying waste to half the galaxy, the Tzara kicked humanity’s ass, but this was what they call a pyrrhic victory. Apparently at some point during the war, humans managed to kill all the Tzara females so the plan B was for the few surviving humans to scatter across the galaxy and quietly try to get their numbers back up and just outlive the Tzara. 

But despite being a doomed race, the Tzara weren’t going to just let their enemies outlive them, so they went about hunting down the last of humanity. Which they didn’t have too much trouble with seeing as they still had a titan class ship they could use to bully others into helping them, not to mention humans had been assholes to many other races during their golden age, so wasn’t like humans had many alien allies.

It’s all very METAL and if THAT had actually been the entire story, this comic would have been a whole lot better.

What we get instead is Eric stumbling upon the last human female disguised as a cat furry (Ulrika) at some galactic hive of scum and villainy. Oh and he also stumbles on some drunk bum who is Odin. Yes, THAT Odin. In this dimension apparently instead of properly dying in Ragnarok, he ran away from Fenris. It’s a whole other subplot which honestly wasn’t really needed and just served to make the main story unnecessarily convoluted by trying to tie it altogether.

Part of this tie in is how humanity was in this particular dimension, like I said they were a warrior race and they did semi-dress like space vikings crossed with space romans. Ulrika particularly has a valkyrie style going on after her furry disguise is destroyed. They’re chased by some bounty hunters for awhile looking to get a big payday, but Odin actually helps them out with his godly vaporizing powers. Ulrika is pretty overjoyed about finding a human man though since she’s eager to mate with him and have a whole mess o babies. (She’s also a virgin and doesn’t really know exactly how the actual process works and the time involved in carrying a child)

So you’d think this means Eric and Ulrika got the king of the norse gods on their side, things might not be all the bad, but Odin’s still a big drunk and he’s plagued by self-loathing and sorrow due to the fact he ran away during Ragnarok. So when the Tzara capture ALL of them, Odin’s fairly useless moaning over his failures wondering what the point of everything is. (Great now we got TWO whining faggots in the story) Ulrika is ready to fight, but Eric is like “Yep, this ain’t my fight, I’m off to find my wife, see ya.” and uses his dimension hopping powers to leave. (Okay, that is pretty funny)

However ends up somehow on old Earth or Urth as it’s called here. He talks to the Tree of Life (Which has seen better days) who gives him some acorns to help give life back but it will require sacrifice of his own life. Eric as usual doesn’t want any part of something that invites death, so the Tree tells him of the whole Ragnarok fuck up since Odin was supposed to sacrifice himself to have the whole life and death cycle continue, but since he ran away it fucked everything up. 

Cut back to Ulrika now bald headed and missing an arm and being thrown before the Tzara leader Zatog. He surprisingly mentions that she won’t be killed but instead sterilized and put in an intergalactic zoo. Ulrika is always defiant though and still tries to fight. As for Odin, they got him strapped to a table of some sort, but they’re getting annoyed with his wailing and about ready to just throw him out an airlock. 

Eric pops up again on the ship after his story time with the tree of life is over. Odin suddenly decides to revert to his old self and starts killing the Tzara to protect Eric (of all people) One of the Tzara manages to take out Odin’s one good eye but that just causes a huge explosion of godly power blowing a huge hole in the ship allowing Odin to scoop up Ulrika and Eric and head back to Urth since he wants to finally see how all this will end. Meanwhile Zatog is done with the whole civility thing and orders they take the ship Urth and wipe out humanity once and for all.

The last part of this arc starts off with the Tzara getting to Urth and trying to scan for human life signs. During this time, one of the funnier bits in this comic is a group is taking a tour of their ship.

Lol

Cut next to Eric just finishing up fucking Ulrika. Yep, this guy’s been hopping multiple worlds and dimensions looking for his wife and now is the time he decides to cheat on her with some bald cripple. Great job. (Probably another reason why I didn’t like Eric) 

Ulrika is of course thrilled since she didn’t know how pleasurable it was going to be (Well it’s not like she has anyone else to compare him to) and claims she already can feel the future of the human race inside her and the generations that will worship Eric’s memory. Eric’s just like “Well that’s not how pregnancy works, but if by some chance you see my wife, don’t tell her okay?” (Yes, he actually says that)

Odin’s looking for the tree of life, which despite being blind, he’d be able to sense if it was around. Eric finds him and tells him this is all sort of pointless, but Odin isn’t deterred. He doesn’t find the tree of life, but he does find the rainbow bridge which allows him to get back to the battlefield that he fled during Ragnarok.

While all this is going on the Tzara have found Ulrika and despite having only one arm she’s killing a shitload of them claiming that the Tzara aren’t the warriors they once were during the great war with them. Zatog finally gets the drop on her though.

Odin sees his staff of power and says it can make Urth live again, but Fenris soon appears stating he’s been waiting a very long time for Odin to finally return. Odin is about to run, however Eric of all people manages to convince Odin to not be a big faggot and run away stating that spending his life as a drunk clown wasn’t great and the future isn’t always certain so who is to say Fenris will kill him.

Odin finds his courage and battle Fenris who promptly eats him, but Odin tears open Fenris’ stomach killing him and then dying in the process stating that it’s up to Eric to use the staff to bring about life again.

Good ol’ predictable cowardly Eric doesn’t want to actually listen to his own advice, but the same question comes up again as it has throughout this arc and that’s “Do you love life or just YOUR life?”

Odin turns to dust and Eric’s screaming about how he doesn’t know shit about any of this and he needs help, etc. Then he sees the remainder of the Tzara coming over the horizon and Zatog carrying Ulrika’s head on a wooden pole. (There goes the future!) 

Surrounded and not really knowing what else to do, he exclaims that Zatog has won and that he chooses life while promptly shoving the staff of power into the ground. He then starts doing his Intruder mind thing where he attempts to jump somewhere else causing the Tzara to suspect that he’s up to something and they pull out their blasters and shoot at him.

Which results in one of those things where they assume they killed him, but he just managed to disappear in time. With what they assume the last of humanity dead, the Tzara leave and accept their own grim fate that they’ll be heading to the grave soon as well.

Eric rematerializes by the staff and buries the acorns near and says some encouraging words to make Urth green again, before dimension hopping elsewhere.

And that’s it for that arc. There’s two more issues involving Eric where he hops into another dimension, or rather it shows him being thrown into one by the “game masters” 

There’s 3 big aliens monitoring Eric and they’re pissed that he’s not going mad like the other Intruders and it’s terribly inconvenient. One of them states that it was a bad idea to pick a human though I’d say it was more bad luck on their part that they picked a human that wouldn’t get drunk on power. Still, they can still see he’s got enough of an ego that maybe shit will still work out and they figure they’ll guide him to what he’s looking for. 

The world he ends up on is completely populated by womyn. Like they don’t even know what the hell a man is and when they find Eric they think “she” has got some sort of tumor on her. Lol.

He wakes up asking if anyone has seen his wife and they’re freaking out, then soon after Eric’s freaking out because he’s gone full tranny and turned into a woman since apparently a new Intruder power has kicked in which allows him to better blend in with his surroundings. The women of the place have actually heard of Intruders before, so they don’t even mind him hanging around a bit. Of course one is showing him around and…

Yeah it just sort of sucks and isn’t that interesting of an arc.

Long story short, there’s a virtual reality thing going on (Complete with that grid like cyberpunk 80s-early 90s Lawnmower Man style), an evil version of Eric pops up in the virtual world, Eric finally finds his wife Gina who turns out to be The Great Mother in this place and there’s some fighting in the virtual world and eventually Eric wakes up in his own bed with Gina by his side, but it’s not his Gina, it’s some alternate Gina. His real Gina stayed behind for her “daughters” (All those women) mentioning that there’s the whole greater plan going on. 

Finally ends with the GMs getting uneasy since Eric is just becoming too unpredictable and maybe they just need to get another Intruder and kill him already, but since this was the last comic of the series, none of that shit matters. (Head canon is they killed him though because Eric sucks)

Yeah that’s it, we’re done and we can move on to the better stories next posts.

Alright once again, I’m going to go a little out of order on these since I’m going to save the best for last. Actually the first one is pretty cool too though. All of these short stories start off with a little narration with Alexandria as the back drop showing the worlds the books contain inside followed by exploring one in greater detail.

Innocent Blood

While this might sound like the title of some faggy vampire story, it’s actually an alternate reality of WW2 where magic shit happens. Well you usually can’t go wrong with Nazis in a story, so magic ones must be even better!

The story is partially told as if someone is recounting past events of the war. (We’ll get to the actual narrator eventually) and it starts off with Churchill contacting Hitler to finally surrender. As you might expect this doesn’t go over well (Though Churchill thought it was a waste of time anyway)

Too bad you don’t get to see Stalin in the comic. I imagine him as some sort of barbaric bear pelt wearing shaman type.

Hitler manages to throw a fireball through this magical collect call, nearly hitting Church in the process and disconnecting. He then proceeds to throw a temper tantrum and complete shit fit that he’s losing the war. The allies are surrounding him just like Churchill suggested. While there is magic in this world, its apparently used in conjunction with regular tech of that time. For example, you still see the American soldiers using grenades and guns (Because come on, it’s America, even if magic was a thing we’d STILL use guns)

So Hitler looks fucked again, however, unlike in our boring unmagical timeline, the Holocaust death camps actually have a good use (Y’know besides the whole genocide thing)

Hitler uses the tortured souls in those camps to summon an actual demon on the earth. Hey, see for yourself!

Totally METAL

Okay, we’re already on part two.

So Hitler has managed to bind this demon into some sort of super hell tank which can just utterly destroy shit. It’s destroying all opposition and actually regaining ground for the Nazis, even Patton can’t beat it. Churchill and one of his war generals are talking about how to destroy it.

And this is where the narrator is introduced (Richard). He’s the son of the war general Churchill is talking to. Church says there is a simple spell that can take out the demon Elmic, but it’s a pretty grim one. It requires someone innocent of soul to sacrifice himself. They’re both really not keen on the idea, but that’s when suddenly the narrator pipes up saying that if it will end the war then he is willing to die for England.

So after a lot of discussion, arguing, examination and grief they send Richard to do this suicide mission. Of course they don’t send him alone. They have a special commando team of wood elves (Hey you got demons and magic, might as well have elves too) to sneak past all the Nazi warmages.

It’s a brutal journey and by the time they even get close to their goal, only Major Woodhame survives to protect Richard. (Also says casting spells the further he gets from his Welsh homeland gets more and more taxing. I wonder if all the Welsh are wood elves in this world.)

Lol

So Captain Joe tells the elf and the Richard to get away from this place now since Elmic isn’t too far away, but they tell him that’s where they need to go since Richard is going to kill him. After some disbelief and explanation, Captain Joe thinks this is a shit plan for an eight year old to sacrifice himself, especially when he REALLY doesn’t know anything about life, evil or anything at that age.

“Ya gotta know what the devil’s about before ya can spit in his eye.”

The major and Richard are determined to see this plan through despite Joe thinking they’re crazy. Major Woodhame gives Richard the holy book and tells him to not look up at the demon while he recites passages. Richard leaves while the Major is whispering his own prayer that he hopes the Lord and Lady will have mercy on their souls for doing this plan.

So Richard takes the long walk… (Going to just post the rest here)

And once again America saved the world

Okay so these next two short stories were in the last two Intruder books, (Yeah the one with the shit main story arc that I didn’t even bother covering as much as I’m going to cover these two shorter stories) These are both a little more on the light hearted side.

Crumbs

It starts off with a bunch of gingerbread children playing and going on about “Meat men” and the “Meat world” prompting their grandmother to shut up about it or else they might wake up there.

Their skepticism about this happening prompts their grandfather to tell them tale…

Wholesome!

So he mentions how he just suddenly woke up in meat world AND he was naked! Fortunately he said there was a cloth person nearby he managed to get clothing from since they seemed dead anyway (It was just a doll)

Basically Gramps as a boy woke up on the streets of early 1900s America. After getting dressed he’s basically nearly killed several times. Chased by a dog (A furry meat beast), nearly stepped on, (By the giant meat men), nearly crushed by a carriage, a drunk breathes on him (The alkie mentions getting drunk before prohibition kicks in, so this might place the time in December 1919 which makes sense due to the Christmas theme) and just in general trying to avoid death.

He then sees a beautiful gingerbread girl in the window of this shop. Of course this is a bakery he’s looking into. He immediately goes in to try to save her. Now I should say gramps says a really asshole thing here. One of the grandchildren asks “Even more beautiful than grandma?”

And this ginger dickhead says “Even more than grandma.”

Like what the fuck is that to be saying to your grandkids, never mind the fact that his wife isn’t all that far away where she could have easily heard him.

So he gets in the bakery and tries to save the gingerbread girl only to find that she’s dead, along with a shitload of other ones on a cooking sheet. He’s horrified by all this, but with another meat man approach he doesn’t have time to hide so he pretends to be one of the proper cookies.

He unfortunately gets scooped up and given to a little girl who looks like Alice from Alice in Wonderland (Even dressed like her).

The girl takes him home in a bag and gets ready to Attack on Titan this little fucker.

Plot twist: This whole tale was Alice just tripping on mushrooms and Caterpillar hashish again

So just as randomly as he got to meat world by thinking about it, he also gets home by thinking about that instead.

Just then the grandmother says he finished his story just in time since dinner is ready. The kids go to get seated still skeptical that meat world is a real place, but the you see gramps looking in a mirror fixing his collar and you see a bite mark in his shoulder and him winking to breath the fourth wall.

In any case, he’s not going to be getting any ginger snaps from grandma if she did hear what he said earlier.

Next story

The Toaster’s Tale

Okay this was the very last story in Intruder and they really phoned this shit in. It’s basically a parody of The Brave Little Toaster which granted isn’t terrible and it’s still better than what the main story arc was, but it’s definitely not the best one they could have ended with. (Artwork isn’t that great either on this one)

So it starts off with Tom the toaster talking about a recent event that happened with his owner Simon.

Simon comes home and bangs up his car while parking it. The car wants to get fixed up, but Simon says he can’t afford it and actually blames the car for not looking where he was going. Cut to Simon in the kitchen and now Tom and the coffee pot telling Simon that he should get the car fixed. Simon once again says he doesn’t have the money, the coffee pot points out he’s always got enough money when he goes on a date though. Simon starts getting annoyed and tells them to stop trying to tell him how to spend his money.

The next day, they try to be a little more convincing by burning his food. Now Simon gets mad enough he knocks Tom and the coffee pot around a little. The phone, the tv, even the chair all start trying to convince him to fix the car, but at this point Simon gets pissed enough that he smashes the tv, pulls the phone out of the wall (Hey it’s 90s, there’s still landlines!) and burns the chair to death.

The rest of the appliances now gang up on him, but Simon’s a one man army punching the radio, kicking the toaster and hitting the coffee pot with an iron. Then he cuts the power completely defeating this uprising, stating that if there’s anymore trouble he’s still got a lot more gasoline.

Simon goes to celebrate his victory by taking a bath and expects them all to behave when he gets back. The radio however still has back up batteries and unites with the catcher’s mitt to turn the power back on. The radio then plugs himself in and makes the ultimate sacrifice by jumping in the tub with Simon.

With Simon now gone, Tom says they had to piece back their community and it shows him and some of his buddies at a shop buying another Simon hanging on a rack saying they want a more sensitive model this time.

And that’s basically it for that story.

Alright the next story which I considered to be the best of the bunch I’m going to save for another post and I’ll be posting the entire thing. Stay tuned!

Okay final story. This one is another two parter which appeared in last half of the first main story arc in the Intruder comic. (The one with the Tzara dudes) This is also one I’ve mentioned briefly in passing a few times over the years in the forums. Always liked it.

Also while I haven’t talked much about the games in each these comics much, I will mention the one that came in the comic containing the second part of this story. There was a mini-CYOA version of this story and it even included a few dice roll checks for some of the passages. It of course was a rather easy CYOA since all you had to do really was choose what the main character did in the story if you read it, but there were a couple of different outcomes not in the story.

Anyway let’s get on with this tale.

Mama’s Boy

I like how the reverend didn't correct Morris' assumption that Tony was retarded.

Yep, even in this universe Mormons suck.

Why the hell wouldn't you eat your dessert. The rev's right, they are FOOLS.

Bonus points that they implied there's a whole religious order dedicated to the concept of divine incest

Even not counting the whole "Mom=God" stuff, there's still things like this that make the world a little more alien from ours

The wacky world aside, the comic also does a good job of hitting all the noir detective tropes.

Mom in all her June Cleaveresque glory.

"A simple boy". Yep, Mom just confirmed Tony is indeed a retard. (Well maybe idiot savant given his powers)

Even a wholesome ending.

Well that's it for this round of reviews. The Buck Roger's one I'll get around to later at some point and probably a different since it's one of the more fleshed out comics that TSR was publishing mainly because they were really trying to push the game setting, but more on that when the review thread comes about. Stay tuned!

Wow, did anyone even read the previous Mamma's Boy story? Didn't even get a passing comm for that one and it really was the best of the lot (Including these Buck comics I'm about to review). Tough crowd.

Anyway, rebooting this thread after nearly a year to finish up the last reviews of these TSR comics. Next up is the Buck Rogers one, but again a little extra history first.

So as I mentioned in the very first post, all of this comic endeavor was to try to branch out and tap into other markets and all that other shit. Didn't work out for TSR obviously on a grand scale, but more specifically it also didn't work out for their recently acquired Buck Rogers rights either.

For the Zoomers (and probably Alphies now here) if you haven’t heard of Buck Rogers, he was basically a very early pulp scifi action hero that went around getting into adventures IN SPACE…and the future since he’s always a pilot from his original time that got frozen and thawed out later in the 25th century.

He started out as a newspaper cartoon strip back in the late 20s along with a radio show and film serials later. Had a pretty good run until about the late 60s when the comic strip ended. However, there was a brief revival towards the end of the 70s to very early 80s. Besides the short lived strip at this time, there was also the TV show during this time.

He’s also always a straight white dude saving the galaxy because you always want a little realism in this sort of thing.

So TSR had the Buck Rogers rights back in the late 80s and thanks to the leadership at the time, they were REALLY trying to revive it and make it profitable. This naturally included a pen and paper roleplaying game, but also a board game (Which I used to own, it was basically like scifi Axis and Allies) a couple of video games, some novels and finally this comic book.

It was a multi-pronged attack which ultimately lead to disaster. Buck just wasn’t popular enough to pull TSR out of the tail spin they were heading down at the time and all the money they poured into it probably just made it worse. TSR wasn't really being managed well at the time anyway.

Still, I actually think their take on Buck was sort of interesting since they took a less “anything goes” and more “hard scifi” approach than other versions did. This version only centered around our solar system, tech wasn’t really “ultra-high tech” and there weren’t any aliens, though there were definitely genetically engineered humans to the point that they didn’t necessarily resemble humans proper anymore.

But we’ll get into all that as I review some of this stuff.

One last thing is “Who exacty was the villain for Buck?” Well that’s another interesting thing. Buck sort of came out before certain “tropes” were in place. Normally a guy like Buck is fighting SPACE NAZIS or something similar to Nazis because y’know Star Wars. Even if the Nazis aren’t specifically human, they’re usually aliens with Nazi like trappings. (AKA Cardassians from Star Trek)

However since Buck predated the Nazis, his earliest adventures were fighting the old “Yellow Peril” in some way. So yes, AZNs. Usually they were like a mongol horde (IN SPACE) type with Chinese Empire (IN SPACE) mixed in. (Of course by the time the 40s rolled around, Japs (IN SPACE) were even more fair game)

Fighting yellow hordes is great and all, but a hero really can’t really stand out unless he’s got a proper villain, which Buck did have in the form of “Killer” Kane who was a arrogant criminal/dictator/traitor/whatever role was needed for the Buck incarnation at the time. Kane was a white dude, but I mean come on, only another white guy is going to be a worthy villain match for a white hero after all. (Kane usually had a "sneaky" looking appearance so he probably had some mixed blood, and/or was a closeted degenerate)

Of course as time moved on, Buck’s old AZN killing days were gradually dropped. TSR completely changed things up and went a more “cyberpunk” route and made a corpo style government the main enemy, known as RAM.

Which stood for the Russo-American Mercantile.

For more lols, RAM dominated the solar system from Mars as their HQ.

(Insert whatever comment about today’s political climate and certain billionaire interests in the red planet here)

Next up, the reviews. Stay tuned!

Not sure what I was doing 11 months ago but I did miss that one somehow. It is a good one though.

TSR having a double meaning will always make me smile 

Alright the easiest way to do these reviews is by story arc. As I said way earlier in this thread, the Buck Rogers comic didn’t have any short stories outside its main focus, though it did have stories that focused on characters other than Buck. And in one instance this became a main story, but more on that later.

Anyway so the main story of the first 3 comics is…

Rude Awakening 1-3

Yep, still a white guy.

The comic starts off with Buck giving his last report since he’s dying after his battle with MASTERLINK. He’s recording that he’s no hero and just a regular flyboy that sacrificed all to save his country and planet from destruction.

But backing up just a bit earlier. We see a secret US air force base in a mountain where Colonel Rogers is getting picked to fly a highly experimental aircraft. His old scientist buddy Doc Huer who helped develop it, is explaining everything. It’s basically a jet that can go into space and has all this cool armor and weaponry on it. The problem is they never really tested it and there isn’t any time because the Soviets are threatening to unleash their Masterlink satellite to deactivate the entire US defense grid AND launch all its weapons.

(Ah yes, little did anyone realize the real life Soviet Union would barely outlive the entire comic’s 10 issue run)

Really though the USSR doesn’t have the idea to launch nuclear armageddon, what happened is their operative assigned to Masterlink has gone completely rogue or Masterlink’s AI gained control over him. It isn’t too clear on that point, but Comrade Karkov is perfectly fine with being borgafied to destroy the US.

In fact, he’s not even too keen on his soviet comrades at this point. As far as he’s concerned, they better listen to him or they’re getting nuked as well and start doing that thing where he’s so integrated with the machine that’s he referring to himself as “Us” and “Masterlink Karkov”

Obviously one should always be wary of anyone using the word “master” in his name.

So Buck flies into outer space where he and Karkov have their space battle. They exchange a few threats and one liners as is the style of such things. Karkov in particular is prone to the villainous boasts about he is more than anyone now and he’s in the process of downloading his personality into the Masterlink where he’ll have complete control over earth’s systems. How the fuck the Soviets built something so ultra tech to do such a thing in the first place can just be accepted as the “anything goes” part of the genre.

It comes down to the wire since Buck has expended all his ammo and missiles so he does the only thing he can do to stop Karkov which is suicide ram into him. Masterlink warns Karkov while he’s busily focusing on downloading himself, but he dismisses it as a bluff just before Buck smashes into him.

Everything explodes spectacularly. Masterlink is wrecked and Buck’s black recorder box ejects while he’s slowly freezing to death. His last words being his life in exchange for saving the world is a good one and he’d do it again.

Fade to a complete black page (And saving on costs!)

Next pages show a scientist excitedly going on about finding something that nobody believed existed and how he’s going to get the prize along with showing all the major players in the galaxy.

I might as well go over them now to save a bit of time later.

Andreson - Yeah don’t worry about him, you’ll soon see why. Lol

Wilma Deering - She’s the leader of NEO (The New Earth Organization) which mostly fights to liberate Earth from RAM control. Wilma’s been around since the original Buck Rogers comic though of course she became more of an action girl with newer incarnations. She’s of course always buck’s romantic interest, but this can be a bit of a roller coaster at times since she’s frequently annoyed with Buck or whatever reason (Sometimes due to Ardala)

Holzerhein - He’s head of RAM (Russo American Mercantile remember?) and was created during this incarnation of Buck as far as I know. If you’re wondering why he’s got a weird red coloring, that’s not just due to him being on Mars, but due to him being a sentient hologram effectively making him immortal. Other than that’s he’s a typical corporate overlord and I’ll be calling him Holoboy from here on out.

Ardala - She’s a space hooker. Okay she’s a space madam or rather a really powerful space madam. She essentially runs a giant brothel on an asteroid and trades in secrets to stay ahead in the political games of the solar system.

Ardala is another character that was around since the earliest days of Buck. She’s usually the daughter of some space tyrant in most versions (Hell she was Killer Kane’s daughter in at least one) so she’s often “Princess Ardala”

In this version though her back story is a minor mystery, but she’s more independent in this one. (More on that later)

No matter what the version though she ALWAYS wants Buck’s dick (Even when she’s scheming against him).

Kane - It’s Killer Kane and in this version he has the appearance that he’s working with NEO, but of course as I’ve already mentioned he’s a horrible traitor in past versions so I’m not surprising anyone that he turns out to be one in this version too. He’s no major tyrant though, he’s just a ruthless mercenary type for the most part.

He also has a relationship with Wilma. This wasn’t a new idea as he did have one with her in the old comic strip too. Naturally this always results in a split soon after Buck comes into the picture.

Black Barney - As far as I know Barney was newly created for this version of the comic. Though he is a space pirate at his core so he might have been based on some space pirates that Buck fought in past versions.

Barney is probably one of those characters that the writers were toying around with the most. His first appearances like you see in the pic are him as this masked man who just screams evil badass. He also turns out to be a “Gennie”. One of the super genetically engineered humans, so he’s stronger and faster too.

However, they soon do a spin off story focusing on him and it basically turns him more into an anti-hero which rounded out the cast. Buck and Wilma are clearly good guys while the RAM corpos are clearly bad. Kane’s a traitor and he’s got such a long history of being an asshole so he wasn’t the one to turn into a proper anti-hero. (And Ardy is already a femme fatale so not her either)

So Barney ended up becoming the Han Solo though probably less outright heroic than Han became. You even see his face eventually, but more on that later.

Okay enough info dump, back to the story. Anderson’s find is of course the remains of Buck’s ship floating in the asteroid belt. He also finds Buck who is frozen solid thanks to the cryo device that was for an emergency in case he couldn’t get back to earth. Yeah, there was supposed to be a system in place to send a team to eventually save him, but well shit happened.

Wilma shows up to tell Anderson that he needs to get the hell away from the scene because RAM is heading their way, but Anderson is paranoid that Wilma is trying to steal his find so time is wasted.

Black Barney then arrives to take the prize he’s heard so much about. After a bit of arguing and threats between him and Wilma, RAM finally arrives with its stormtroopers which finally causes Barney to get out of there.

RAM declares its taking over the ship and that’s when the stormtroopers (Or terrines as the faceless armored mooks are called in this) are shot to death by someone. Wilma smells gunpowder which hasn’t been used in 500 years. She turns around and sees Buck defrosted introducing himself and holding his trusty Colt 45 because damn straight he took his gun into space like a true American hero.

That’s the end of the first comic.

Next one starts off with Buck passing out and Wilma having to drag his ass back to her ship. She escapes RAM, but Barney is still tracking her from a distance.

Buck briefly wakes up to a half naked Wilma Deering floating towards him explaining how he’s lucky he survived cryosleep since its rare for folks to do so. She also mentions he’s a hero of hers, along with him being a legend since his black recorder box was found in 2083. Buck thinks he’s been asleep for a century until she mentions the black box was found 400 years ago. (Then passes out again)

She meets up with Kane on another asteroid who finds out the big surprise was she rescued Buck. Kane wonders if he should be jealous, but Wilma says she doesn’t go for older men because she doesn’t have daddy issues. Doesn't quite explain why she decided to be half naked in front of him earlier though.

in any case Barney steals Buck away because he can. Kane doesn’t really give a shit, but Wilma is already planning to go rescue him since Buck is basically a major symbol to the NEO resistance movement, plus y’know he’s her hero and all.

Barney’s plan was to turn him over to RAM for the phat loot prize, however he’s got a shitload of bounties already on his head so he needs a go between. Naturally the best one for that is Ardala who isn’t exactly pleased to see him either, but she’s a little more flexible on the situation since she’s getting a cut of the money and is planning on ripping off Barney and his pirate crew into poverty while they party and gamble on her pleasure planetoid.

Plus she finds spending time with Buck appealing since he’s an older man and she definitely has daddy issues what with being a space hooker and all.

So he wakes up again to now find half naked Ardala hovering over him. She explains a few things like how people genetically engineer themselves to the planets they tends to live on since he thinks at first some of the strange people he’s seeing running about on her asteroid to be aliens. She makes a lot of flirty remarks towards him, but she’s still got a deal to do and takes him to see Holoboy on Mars.

Instead of killing Buck immediately RAM hopes to maybe turn Buck against NEO. His victory against masterlink is seen as a victory over AI/computers. Seeing as RAM is run by Holoboy it makes a little sense that they see themselves as following Buck’s footsteps in sticking it to the toasters. Though its a bit more than that considering RAM is actively occupying Earth. Holoboy isn’t entirely convinced that he shouldn’t just kill him and be done with it.

Holoboy gives Buck some sort of children’s learning device to catch him up to speed on what exactly is going on in the solar system then they give him a room to settle down in. Buck turns it on and is surprised to see his old buddy Doc Huer appear in holo form. Why Huer? Well because that was pretty much the last person he spoke with directly from the old days so the computer decided it would help to have a familiar face to assist with the learning process.

Turns out though the device doesn’t work as planned. The device breaks down in error since it runs on a class system. Basically it only allows certain classes to see what they want to see. So basically a ready made echo chamber. Seeing as Buck is over 500 years old and has no class in this new future the device couldn’t properly link to him.

Congrats on Holoboy holding the stupid villain ball on this one. You’d think he’d fucking know something like this could happen with his own damn tech.

So the device has gone haywire and now Doc Huer isn’t really bound by its programming anymore and can answer Buck’s direct questions since that’s still working. Huey warns Buck that he’s considered dangerous and valuable to RAM and they have no intention of letting him go. Buck tries the door which is locked, however there’s a balcony. He also notices the gravity is lower so he just takes a bedsheet and uses it as a makeshift parachute to freedom.

Cue Ardala entering Buck’s room with some booze and ready to fuck, however she notices he’s escaped exclaiming that Holoboy is a dumb ass not having more security and not thinking like how a human would think.

Meanwhile Buck is now on the lower level of Mars where he’s equally unwelcome. The poor unwashed Martians think he’s an “upper” and not pleased to see one of those that are currently lording it over them. Another one thinks he’s a scummy asteroid belter dressed like an “upper.”

Buck tries his best to figure out how to get out of the situation, but it isn’t long before he runs afoul of Black Barney who stuns him unconscious to deliver him again to the highest bidder.

So far Buck’s spending most of his time unconscious. Thrilling stuff!

End of the second comic.

The final bit of this arc starts off with a damn one page recap of what happened after Buck woke up from cryosleep. Not really necessary, but whatever.

Holoboy is yelling at his board of directors about letting Buck escape, never mind the fact that he was the main one responsible in the first place by being an idiot.

Barney has Buck aboard his ship, but is only slightly more careful about things. His main plan is to sell Buck to NEO now. He studies the device that Huer is on since he thinks RAM could track them with it. After changing it so info can’t go out of it, he hands it back to Buck and doesn’t bother to take away Buck’s pistol since he’s not worried about an antique. He then says Buck’s got free reign to move about the ship and warns him not to abuse it.

While this is somewhat holding a stupid villain ball, Barney almost immediately catches Buck accessing Huer to try to take control of the ship. Buck attempts to punch him, but only hurts his hand in the process. Barney still isn’t impressed when Buck just pulls his pistol on him and dares him to shoot.

Buck shoots Barney in the head and he goes down. That was easy.

Of course this doesn’t kill him (Armor plated skull stops the bullet), though it certain surprises him that the “antique” had enough power to cause him to go down. This does however by the convenient code of rogues, allow Buck to gain command of the ship as he who beats the captain, becomes the captain. Buck playing by the code of the video game hero, recruits Barney to help him get back to Earth rather than throwing him out an airlock. (Defeat equals friendship and friendship is magic!)

Buck finally gets back to Earth and Huer tells him to prepare himself since its a shithole now. Even more than when Buck left it. Turns out RAM somehow knew he was heading towards Earth as well, which causes Buck to be suspicious. They blow up some RAM ships and tells Barney to drop him off on Earth since he’s got some things to discover on his own. Also calls up Wilma and says he’ll meet with NEO later. (She’s not pleased about that seeing as it was set up for him to meet up with NEO, or at least Barney set it up before Buck got control of the crew)

Barney drops Buck off at the old base where he was picked to fly the experimental jet, while Barney goes on some mission that Buck sends him on (They don’t explain what, just sort of jumps a bit to “You know what to do right?”)

Buck explores the ruins of Iron Mountain asking Huer what the hell happened to Earth since he thought he prevented WW3 from happening. Huer explains that did happen or at least it happened for 300 of the years he was out. Earth didn’t get turned into a wasteland until the RAM wars of 2210-2222. RAM was a unified corporate giant on Mars while Earth was still a planet of divided nations. RAM ended up playing them against each other and swooped in to play “peacemaker” all the while gutting it of its remaining resources.

Wilma and Kane eventually show up after learning his whereabouts on Earth. Wilma’s all hot on him wanting to come back with her to join NEO, but Buck at this point is sick of everyone wanting to use him as some sort of pawn so he’s not completely sold on joining NEO just because Wilma’s screaming about it and seemingly fighting for Earth.

Then of course RAM’s terrines show up and Buck’s already running for cover with Wilma. However she’s of the mind that he’s more useful staying out of harm’s way and remaining a “symbol” meanwhile Buck doesn’t like the idea of “rank and file” NEO resistance dying for him. Wilma leaves Buck in the company of Kane while she tries to help out some NEO troops, and already after she’s left Kane’s pulling a gun on him.

Buck however isn’t too surprised, since he already figured someone had to tell RAM where he was heading, not to mention Kane’s earlier attitude didn’t seem surprised that RAM showed up. Buck manages to get the drop on him and knocks him out before helping Wilma who’s nearly getting herself killed.

After he’s saved her, he tells her that Kane’s a big fat traitor. Wilma doesn’t believe him, and Buck is like fine Barney’s back, I’m just gonna hitch a ride with my new crew.

It’s at this point Barney lands and reports to Buck about the mission Buck set him on which was finding out about secret transmission to RAM which all points to Kane especially since when they go to question him directly, he’s already woke up and left the area.

Wilma is all despondent about her boyfriend being a traitor since before he WAS a war hero in the fight and if RAM can get to him then it’s looking grim for the resistance.

However, Buck does his heroic uplifting speech that even though he doesn’t even know all the sides and all the players, he’s fighting for earth since it’s his home.

And that’s it for the first story arc.

Overall it’s not a terrible introduction to the setting.

I’ll also mention that comics 2 and 3 also have a second story after the main one. And that story involves Black Barney. In fact, after this Buck arc, Barney gets the spotlight as the main story for the next 3 issues, meaning out of the ten issues, he’s got half of them either solely or partially focused on him.

But that’ll be the story arc I’ll review next post.

Also:

TL;DR Here’s some pics of Ardala since there’s rumors that guys don’t read and respond better to pictures and here I’ve gone and placed them after all the text. You’re welcome gooners.

Very good post about....boobs?

Alright as I mentioned the Black Barney story started off as the secondary one in the previous Buck story, but by the 4th comic, this changed up and Barney’s story was the main one and a Buck one was the secondary. So he got his own covers eventually.

Yeah, Barney was already a more fun character to read about

Anyway on with it

Black Barney: His Search for Meaning of Life and Happiness (2-6)

The story starts off with Barney’s merry band of space pirates attacking a RAM security prison with the intention of releasing all the prisoners. Apparently he’s doing a job for the Brigand League and he’s already doing 6 impossible things before breakfast the entire time by just bum rushing the place.

Certainly more interesting than Buck passing out all the time

Right away the comic has a bit more of a “cartoony” vibe due to how goofy the expressions are on some folks, though it’s got a black humor vibe too since there’s more than a few graphic deaths, some of which are played for laughs.

Barney is less of a brooding anti-hero and more on the spectrum of “enjoys being a violent sociopath” for the most part

Of course he’s also got some main crew buddies that he relies on more than others. One of these Skrugg who is one of his older dwarf like crewmates with a walrus mustache and Peg who seems to be his crewmate/girl with a secret crush on him. It’s sort of established early on that she likes him to some degree, but Barney being Barney, well he’s not exactly the monogamous type. (More on that in a bit) He also seems a bit unaware of her feelings.

So after freeing the prisoners, there’s one more that Skrugg is currently attempting to release but whoever it is, is behind a huge metal door that he’s trying to open with some sort of heavy plasma cutter. They figure it must be someone really dangerous, but to their surprise it’s a HAWT girl. Barney immediately decides to take her back to his ship “The Free Enterprise”

Like the little illustrated thought bubbles

But before he can fuck Judee, there’s an alarm saying there’s a ship approaching at fast speed and effortlessly dodging all their attempts to hit it. The pilot inside isn’t looking well and saying to himself that he can’t die before he sees Barney.

He manages to dock with the Free Enterprise and Barney’s already ready for a fight. Except instead of getting that, the pilot opens the door only to start melting (or finish melting since he was already doing it before he opened the door) saying that Barney is going to die in the same way that all of them  will eventually do.

End of the 1st bit

It should be noted that “Barney” isn’t just Black Barney’s name but also a “designation”. All barneys are essentially these genetically engineered cyborgs though nobody seems to know why exactly since they seem to be unique even as far as “gennies” go.

The one who just melted was a “barney” too, though he was going by the name “Potemkin” and Black Barney tracks where his ship recently departed from which was from Luna where he was in contact with another barney called Klaus Yorder.

Barney decides to go have a chat with Yorder. Peg offers to go with him since she grew up on Luna, but he wants her to stay on the ship with Skrugg to keep the ship ready for launch. Judee however insists that she’ll go with him to keep him out of trouble which Barney seems to be fine with mainly because she’s pretty much been hanging on his arm and acting like a cat in heat since he released her.

They land on Luna and Barney decides the best place to start looking is the scummiest bar he can find. Judee thinks it’s just an excuse to go bar hopping, but Barney assures her this is the best way. Doesn’t take long before he gets into a bar fight with the local gang though as luck would have it, the leader of the gang recovers from his beating and mentions that Yorder said a barney might show up so he’s got something Yorder wanted him to see.

Cut to a scene back on Mars at RAM HQ where one of the high ranking executives Mr. Titov is having a conversation with a pair of siblings Veruschka and Dutter Wydlin.

As it turns out the Wydlin corporation is the one that created the barneys, but they were bought out by RAM a long time ago. However, the barneys have been a thorn in RAM’s side (And the solar system in general) so to stop hemorrhaging profits from the chaos they cause, Titov is in talks with the last of the Wydlin heirs who claim they just need to track down a device that will get them all in line.

Of course this being all corpo shit, both sides are plotting to try to cut the other out and Titov already has a spy on Luna that’s located Barney.

So cut back to Barney, Judee and the teenage gang leader heading to Yorder’s hideout. The teen explains Yorder was his friend and how Potemkin was also recently here. Turns out though that Yorder’s been dead awhile and he’s just left a recording to warn other barneys about their eventual fate.

So before the Wydlin Corp got the hostile take over treatment, they created the barneys as a last fuck you to RAM. The barneys were deliberately made to give RAM grief in some way. However Wydlin still being corpo bastards didn’t give their creations complete freedom and implanted a genetic time bomb that goes off after 20 years have passed. Basically all their cells turn cancerous and they turn into genetic sludge. So the only hope is to locate the original lab since maybe it’ll have a way to stop the bomb. Potemkin was the first barney. Yorder was the second and it turns out Black Barney is the 7th, so he doesn’t have much time.

Before he can get going, the RAM spy shows up with an ambush crew. They kill the teenage gang leader, but not before he tells Barney that Yorder said that Mercury is the next place he should continue his search.

End of the 2nd bit.

Next bit picks up with Barney and Judee fighting off the spy and his back up. Judee might look like she’s just there for eye candy, but considering she was locked up in a maximum security prison, she actually is fairly dangerous.

Still, the pair of them are greatly outnumbered, but fortunately for them Peg and Skrugg overheard RAM broadcasts so they came down to help. And while Peg thinks she’s finally going to get head pats, what barney does instead is kiss Judee and go on about how great she was at fighting along side him causing more illustrated thought bubbles of Peg plotting Judee’s murder.

So now they’re on their way to Mercury though Barney’s got a lot on mind trying to do research on the Wydlin corp so Judee is temporarily forced to not be able to hang around him, so she starts talking with Skrugg (Who is wondering why she isn’t currently running her fingers through the captain’s hair). Skrugg goes into a little backstory about how Barney was created by old man Wydlin and specifically designed for space piracy in mind. Also mentions there were 40 of his kind created.

He also mentions that Barney killed the old captain and while things are a lot more hectic with him in charge, they’re also a lot more profitable.

When they get to Mercury the plan is to locate this raider group that’s been attacking RAM mining factories. Since this takes some skill and insanity to pull off successfully, it can only be surmised that the leader must be another barney. This time he’s got Judee and Peg accompanying him.

Doesn’t take long to track down an attack on a RAM factory in progress. After a bit of fighting, the three get captured by the raider group who think they’re spies by the rulers of Mercury, the Sun Kings. They take the trio to an underground system of tunnels to speak with their leader S’nee, who of course is indeed a barney. She isn’t entirely convinced that the barneys have a genetic time bomb within them saying that Yorder tried to convince her months ago.

S’nee looks a little like Grace Jones. Nobody remembers her much now, but she was a bit more well known in the 80s.

(Interestingly her crew also all have those glasses that the marvel villain Mole Man wears. Probably not a coincidence given they live underground and comic writers tend to give nods to each other)

She still thinks they’re spies until Barney manages to get the upper hand and tells her to calm the fuck down or they’re both going to die soon. This amuses her enough that she’s willing to listen more to his tale…in her bedroom.

This prompts Judee looking incredulous with Peg just smirking at her like “First time?”

So while all this is going on, the Sun Kings’ police have tracked down rebel HQ and are taking step to destroy the mountain they’re currently under. Police blow a big hole in it and start pouring in. S’nee now changes her demeanor again believing that Barney IS a spy that ratted on them and starts attacking. Barney really tries to subdue her without killing her to prove he’s telling the truth, but while he’s got her pinned, the time bomb within her starts going off and body horror ensues.

Not good

As she’s painfully rotting away from the inside out, she begs for mercy and for Barney to do something but there isn’t anything he can do. About midway through she is given mercy however with Judee suddenly shooting her in the head.

Barney and his ladies manage to escape the ensuing chaos and off Mercury despite Barney now getting slightly depressed about the idea that he’s probably going to die soon in a similar way.

Cut to Mr. Titov again who has a particularly vicious looking barney in front of him called El Shaata. He’s captured him at great cost to have him kill Black Barney. El Shaata doesn’t see much point in killing barney if he’s already dying, let alone working for RAM. Titov however points out that Black Barney has been the most troublesome so having him made a personal example of would be desirable. Also if El is able to do this, they’ll share the cure they’ve found out about. RAM believes that if the barneys could be useful if brought under control and El would get the first perks of being the first to work for RAM.

El agrees to this and is given the location of Barney’s current whereabouts which is now orbiting Ardala’s pleasure planetoid. Extra instructions have been given to not make a mess of the place since her zone is still technically neutral territory for everyone.

Cut back to Barney giving his final instructions to Skrugg saying he’s leaving the Free Enterprise for good. Peg starts getting upset about this claiming he can’t just leave, but Barney is now in broody anti-hero mode claiming he’s got four months to live and nothing he ever did meant anything. Peg tearfully tries to convince him that he gave them a rallying point and lead them to victory time and time again over RAM, but it doesn’t work so she just does the whole “Well just give up and die see if I care.” thing while running off to cry somewhere.

It almost looks like he’s going to say more to her, but Barney’s got too much stoic toxic masculinity to do something like that so he’s off.

Judee meets him in the shuttle bay thinking she’s different than everyone else saying that the pleasure planetoid sounds fun, but Barney’s in no mood for Judee’s endless flirting exclaiming he doesn’t want to die in front of his friends, then he throws her back in the main ship and sets off for the pleasure planetoid.

When he gets there, Ardala’s a little insulted that he’s asked for the best girls, but not her (In the previous Buck story it very briefly established that Ardy and Barney have their own volatile on and off again relationship) She tells him that it’s going be expensive and when he mentions he’s staying for 4 months, she mentions that’s REALLY going to be expensive. He tosses her his Luna bank card and says he can afford it.

Even in anti-hero brooding mode, Barney’s still not going to just sit sulking in the dark totally alone for days on end

(And another 80s reference with "Jimmy Swagger" suite which was obviously a reference to the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart and his scandal of getting caught with a hooker in a motel room. Not as well known now but tons of jokes about it back then)

After he leaves, El Shaata appears from nearby and Ardy tells him to give Barney at least 15 minutes since she wants him to at least get some of his money’s worth.

So Barney’s sitting in a hot tub sexing up three woman and drinking non-stop, however his thoughts turn to Ardala’s snarky comment about hoping the suite she’s set him up in brings back fond memories. Snarky since apparently at some point in the past when he spent time with Ardala in this room she tried to have him killed.

And then that’s when he realizes she actually gave him a warning.

El Shaata suddenly attacks, but Barney’s a little more ready than he was expecting giving him a solid kick to the face. Barney then feels his foot hit titanium and wonders why another barney is attacking him. El Shaata mentions a cure which then perks Barney up from his depression. So now having a reason to live again, he fights for his life.

And the comic ends with them both flying out the window fifty stories high and in Barney’s case he’s also completely naked.

End of the third bit.

I feel like it was a little odd for Barney to just give up after the Mercury thing since he was looking for a cure before, but I guess the logic was he didn’t have any more leads with S’nee’s death so he lost all hope. Though it isn’t like S’nee would have been much help anyway since she didn’t believe the time bomb story.

But anyway on with the next comic.

Starts out as it was left, with Barney and Shaata falling fifty stories, though Ardy apparently keeps the gravity on the lower end of things so barney’s confident he’ll survive the fall. They crash through one of the strip clubs where Barney grabs a slide puppy from a stripper to cover his nakedness.

What’s a slide puppy? Well, it’s easier to just show you.

Like I said, Barney typically had more interesting situations happening than Buck

Barney beats the chicken soup out of Shaata, but doesn’t kill him. He instead tells him to send a message back to his RAM masters that he’s not giving up and he’s finding that cure.

Meanwhile Ardy’s lezzing it up with some young girl and watching these events unfold. Her teen queen seems a little concerned about it, but Ardy exclaims the damages are nothing compared to the excitement Barney just brought to the place which will bring in more tourists, not to mention she’s still got his Luna card to pay for everything. As for RAM they can’t bitch to her about any of this since it was their idea to send an assassin in the first place which technically violates the neutrality rules. Not her fault the assassin failed.

“Everyone got fucked and I get paid!” - Ardala

Cuts back to the Free Enterprise where Peg is still holding out hope that Barney is coming back. Judee however says she’s not the captain and the crew should just get shore leave since they’re already in orbit. Peg says no, because they should be ready when Barney comes back.

It’s at this point the claws directly come out and Judee says he’s not coming back for Peg anyway since why would he want a scrawny shrew who can’t get the job done?

Well predictably that leads to Peg slapping the shit out of Judee who is ready to throw down though she’s actually being held back by three crew members who claim how strong she is so Peg shouldn’t really be pursuing this, but she’s undeterred from a fight.

Then Barney suddenly shows up.

Lol

Cuts to Titov on a vidphone with Shaata, screaming at him about letting Barney getting away. He ultimately tells him the deal’s off so they’re even. Shaata remarks that he’s actually ahead since he’s free. Then Titov reminds him he’s still got a genetic bomb in him and it just so happens to be going off right now.

Never gets old

After Shaata melts into goo on the pleasure planetoid, Titov is back to trying to track Barney again. He figures that the Wydlin’s must have a spy on him so he’s wondering what they might know.

Cut to the Wydlin’s who are relaxing at their mansion on Mars and they do indeed get a message on a phone (Amusingly looks nothing futuristic, just looks like a corded phone from the 80s) from a spy about where Barney’s heading next which is the Trojan Asteroid cluster since that’s where he thinks the lab might be. They decide to head there themselves to get the cure directly.

Cuts back to Barney speaking with Peg about from what he believe he’s read about Noah Wylin the creator of barneys that he liked to keep his options open so he wouldn’t plant a bomb unless he could also defuse it somehow. Peg wonders though if the cure isn’t already lost or never existed. Though Barney points out that it must exist otherwise RAM wouldn’t have bothered to bribe another barney with it to try to assassinate him.

Yep, the slide pup starts showing up in panels as a bit of a mascot for the crew now.

There’s a panel with Judee looking a bit suspicious and then they find the remnants of the Wydlin lab. Barney mentions he’ll give forty million credits from his personal accord for anyone who finds the cure first. Skrugg asks didn’t he already give that all to Ardala to which he replies that he actually gave her some high ranking RAM executive’s secret account not his own.

The next nine pages are basically Barney and his crew fighting off an attack from RAM ships. Towards the end Barney gets some help from some unknown on the lab exterior firing a Fatboy nuke at one of the RAM ships. Turns out it’s actually Yorder and he’s alive.

End of the fourth bit

Alright final comic for this story.

It starts off with Barney and his ship still fighting off some RAM ships. Ultimately RAM’s small fleet gets trashed, though Titov manages to survive in very small escape pod sending out a memo to RAM ship design that the pods need to be made bigger and contain toilet paper. All the while hoping he even gets picked up.

With RAM taken care of Yorder invites them all to enter the space station/lab. Skrugg is apprehensive about leaving the ship since it needs repairs, but Peg says Barney said it was fine and besides Judee agreed to stay on the ship.

At this point if it wasn’t obvious by now, Judee is certainly up to no good as she sneaks off the ship and finds her own way into the lab. She also mentions planting a beacon on the ship.

Meanwhile Barney and his crew have entered Noah’s lab and find it’s a paradise. A fully self contained ecosystem with plants, animals, water, etc. Barney’s crew goes off to bathe in clean water for once while Yorder take Barney to meet someone important. Namely Remus Wydlin. (Weird that they kept mentioning a Noah Wydlin as the creator all this time, but whatever)

There’s a small cut to the Wylin siblings with a small battle bot army heading to the beacon Judee planted. They figure RAM softened up Barney and his crew so they can swoop in and grab the cure, sell it and get rich again. (Or much richer than they obviously already are) There’s also a brief bit implying the siblings are a little incestious with each other.

Gotta keep that bloodline pure

Remus says Yorder’s been keeping him updated on how much grief Barney’s been giving RAM and he’s proud of him. Barney though is still worried about getting a cure, though Remus gets a bit philosophical about it and asks does he want to live forever and what he would do with such a cure.

Barney mentions he wants to at least live long enough and that he’d sell the cure to other barneys. Remus is a little disappointed at Barney’s world view of things stating he wanted revenge on RAM not just greed and unrestrained violence and maybe he shouldn’t show Barney his private lab.

Then he notices the lock on his lab is broken. Yorder immediately goes in thinking maybe its one of Barney’s crew sneaking about. He enters and from the darkness Judee puts her fist right through his chest and breaks his spine (and several internal organs) in the process, killing him instantly. Turns out a bit unsurprisingly that Judee has been another barney the entire time.

Barney and Remus enter, with Barney exclaiming that he was cured and she’s a total bitch for killing him. She merely sneers at his words and says “This bitch just snagged herself the cure”  as she holds up a large hypo needle.

Meanwhile cuts to Peg taking a waterfall shower and talking to her new slide puppy that’s curled up on a rock nearby. The pup however starts growling and then the Wydlin battle bots appear causing her to reach for her weapons. Upon hearing the sounds of shooting, the rest of the crew bathing elsewhere go rushing over to Peg’s location and more battle bots arrive.

Cut back to Barney’s showdown with Judee who makes her villainous speech about her past actions. She was planted by the Wydlin’s in the RAM prison to follow him and she’s been relaying info to them the entire time. She mentions that ultimately though she’s not working for anyone, and is going into business for herself and selling the cure for profit. She manages to get the best of Barney stating that she won’t be giving him the cure though because there’s just no way she’d ever be safe with him still alive.

She then injects herself, though Remus warns her that she shouldn’t do that. She tells him to shut up since the old fool is next, to which he states she won’t live to become one. The hypo was a booby trap that speeds up the process rather than cure it.

Judee explodes into a bloody mess spectacularly.

Gooey!

Barney recovers asking if there’s no cure at all, Remus tells him it’s all around him. The atmosphere in Remus’ station kills the genetic time bomb and he was cured as soon as he breathed it in. Meaning Judee died like a retard seeing as she was also already cured.

Cut back to Barney’s crew finishing off the last of the battle bot wave, but Barney soon arrives to tell everyone more are on the way and they need to get back to the ship. Skrugg asks how are they going to escape since the ship is full of holes. Barney tells them to follow him to the new ship Remus is giving him since he’s got a big surprise for his heirs when they finally arrive. Peg asks what about Judee to which the reply is she won’t be joining much to Peg’s delight.

The crew escape in the new Free Enterprise while the Wydlin siblings meet Remus. There’s an exchange of words and then the sister pulls out a pistol to shoot Remus. This Remus though isn’t real and is just a distraction while Barney was able to escape with the cure. Then the entire station blows up with the siblings as Remus says he’s off to get some new heirs.

Cut to the last scenes where Remus is on his own small ship with some of his animal creations to find a new place to do his research in peace. He mentions that any competent geneticist can make a cure for the rest of the barneys with bacteria in Barney’s bloodstream.

Peg asks if Barney’s going to sell the cure, but Barney’s decided instead to give it away to any of the surviving barneys out there since he doesn’t want to play god with their lives. (See, he learned a moral lesson after all) Then it’s back to kicking RAM’s ass.

And that’s the end of that arc.

So yeah this already had way more action going on than Buck’s introduction. Safe to say out of all the stories in the Buck comic series, I probably enjoyed this one the most.

Speaking of Buck, the next story arc I’ll go over is a very short back up involving him during the previous Barney storyline. Though “story” might be giving it a bit too much credit, but we’ll get into that next post.

Yeah, this guy's way cooler than Buck.


That poor dog though....

Alright, this one shouldn’t be too long since there really isn’t much to it. (Not even bothering with pics) Plus it’s less of a story and more of a 22 page info dump (11 pages each over two comics) I imagine too this wasn’t just to elaborate on shit going on in the comics, but also world building for the RPG they were trying to sell too.

Huer.Doc Explains It All (5-6)

So it starts off with Buck talking to Holo Huer on a big video screen, saying that his primitive brain is still having a hard time grasping all the major stuff going on in the 25th century. So Huer says he’ll oblige his desire for a “crash course” on the current situation using the Cybermatrix which is the realm of AI and is the total sum of every computer hooked up in the solar system.

Remember this comic came out before the internet was a mainstream thing, so it’s sort of an odd idea of what it is exactly and what it looks like before the real thing came along. For example RAM controls a lot of shit on this cybermatrix with sentries and traps everywhere to prevent the public from accessing a lot of info, so Huer’s gotta use disguises to get around certain things. Buck thinks these disguises are lame and ridiculous looking, however that’s due to him only seeing the visual representation on his screen. In the real matrix that the doc is actually in, things don’t look anything like what they would to us meatsacks so our mind is just trying grasp things in a way we’d understand.

So the first thing Huer goes over is after Buck destroyed Masterlink, the remaining commies in charge got arrested for war crimes and a new peaceful age was ushered in since everyone at this point was tired of living under the threat of nukes potentially flying. By the mid 21st century the world mostly in cooperation though three major corporations ended up dominating despite there being a planet wide government. The 3 corporations were RAM of course, and also the Euro-Bloc and the Indio-Asian Consortium. These corps would end up being the big movers and shakers in new tech and getting humans to leave the planet.

Which apparently was having a shitload of wars again. Before they mentioned Earth had been relatively peaceful before RAM was whispering poison in every nation’s ears and getting them to fight one another, but apparently they were on the verge of a “last war” even before then. Though entirely possible RAM was doing it all along.

So the eurotrash settled Luna (Or the moon for those that enjoy commoner names for things). They moved a lot of banking shit there so it basically became space Switzerland. (That’s exactly how Huer describes it to Buck)

RAM terraformed Mars by the 22nd century and completely took over the place. Then Elon’s descendants exported this tech to other planets. Specifically Venus. Venus had some issues though since the first colonists there had basically adapted themselves to the environment via genetic engineering since they didn’t have the terraforming tech at the time. This created an issue since now Venus was becoming more earth like making it inhospitable to the OG scalies (Seriously, the decedents all look like lizard people) and driving them to have to live in the canyons and valley of Venus where they could still breathe the atmosphere.

Meanwhile Earth was taxing the shit out of RAM for their ecological recovery which they didn’t take kindly to and completely rebelled. They signed non-aggression pacts with Venus and Luna then attacked Earth. Took 10 years but RAM won.

Of course RAM then decided to immediately take advantage of their “righteous revolutionary” status and reveal their true colors by blowing up Venus’ space elevator. Mars also had a space elevator which allows for fast transit from orbit so Venus couldn’t compete with them anymore resigning itself to be second place or as I like to call it “First loser”

Venus is basically made up of a lot of little city states and nations. Aphrodite and Ishtar being the biggest. Aphrodite is a weird matriarchy society run by space lesbians dressed like ancient Greeks while Ishtar is run by space Muslims though it's sort of a mix of old Islam, Taoism and Bahai beliefs. Unsurprisingly these two don’t care for one another. There’s also the Aerostater nomads which live in big floating cities.

At this point people were getting pissed at RAM no matter where they were living so some of these folks became space pirates, while a lot of them went to establish colonies on Mercury which ended up becoming a weird medieval like place ruled by the “Sun Kings”. The place is rich in energy thanks to living so close the giant fire ball in space, but they’re fucked for food supplies and depend on RAM for that.

Earth is completely fucked in every way. Most of it is a wasteland and there aren’t really any nations anymore on it. Just giant Judge Dredd like Megacities called “Orgs” where RAM troops keep control over everything.

Asteroid belt is where you find all the pirates and various outlaw fiefdoms. Adala’s giant space whorehouse is here. Then there’s the outer planets where there’s rumors of other colonies, but a lack of information on them.

Huer then goes into the major players of the Solar System. Naturally most of these consist of various RAM executives. Holoboy of course is mentioned along with that Titov guy. Ardala is actually mentioned as being vaguely related to one of the founding members of RAM, but a lot of her history is cloudy other than acquired her planetoid through unclear means suddenly and Titov sponsored her. (More on that later!)

Huer also mentions the leaders of Ishtar and Aphrodite, along with the current chief of the Sun Kings.

Buck goes on to ask what happened to the real Doctor Huer and Karkov. Not sure why he asks about Karkov because should know that he killed him when he kamikazed into him during their battle. In any case, Holo Huer mentions that Buck only knew the doc after his severe bout with cancer (Holo Huer is actually based on what he looked like in his prime) and just as Buck crashed into Masterlink, Huer actually died of a stress induced heart attack, so he didn’t even survive the entirety of Buck’s mission.

As for Karkov, Holo Huer has to go digging in RAM’s data graveyard where all the inactive files are, but he’s surprised to find nothing and Karkov’s file is gone. (Visually of course this looks like a dug up empty grave)

End of part 1

So the second part starts off with this mystery of Anatoly Karkov’s file being missing, so Buck says he’ll try to do a search prompting Huer to tell Buck not to do that all too late as he’s quickly shunted into a different part of the cybermatrix.

Huer scolds Buck for future reference and mentions he’s been sent to the genetic engineering directory since the only other Anatoly Karkov on file was a genetics researcher of minor importance in the 22nd century.

Huey’s stuck since he didn’t enter this directory through the proper channels, but he’s able to use trapdoors or special access commands for programmers to  go in and out of a program. Unfortunately for him he’s caught by “Nurse Nancy” in the children’s section who thinks he’s trying to sneak out of a lesson. She insists he sit in class until the lesson is over with so now he’s really stuck.

Of course this is all a good excuse now to info dump about how genetic engineering works as part of the world building process. Everyone except purestrain earthlings has been genetically modified in some way. In extreme cases, some folks are tinkered with for specific reasons such as workers or soldiers. They’re also made sterile so they don’t go spreading genetic “mischief” to future generations.

Huer says if he doesn’t leave soon, the RAM mainframe security is going to catch up with him so he sneakily uses another trapdoor in the classroom to escape. Nurse Nancy though notices he’s gone and figures he’s a child going truant and won’t stand for it. She and a security program go chasing after him. Huer starts ducking through maintenance trap doors where Buck loses track of him. In the process Huer finds himself deeper in RAMs databanks than he thought and there’s a two page info dump of all the major fighting ships in the solar system. One of these is even a new class of RAM fighter which Huer takes note of to tell NEO if he manages to get back.

Meanwhile Wilma enters the room asking what Buck’s doing exactly. He explains he’s lost Huer and he’s trying to figure out a way to help him back. This help though means just mashing buttons at random despite Wilma telling him that’s probably not a great idea.

Huey ends up getting shunted again to another directory while the educational program is still chasing him, at this point she’s got a whole mob of security programs helping in her chase too. Wilma steps in to try to help Huer, but the problem is if he makes it back to the NEO mainframe, then RAM is going to learn all their secrets. Huer does make it back, but tells Buck to save NEO’s mainframe and NOT to download him (The educational program notices this is a hidden file)

Of course what Buck does is just unplug the computer, which causes a power surge and starts deleting ALL the programs in the area. Huey just manages to back up all his files before jumping out the screen while the educational program is deleted entirely.

Huey yells at Buck to never just pull the damn plug. Buck takes a nonchalant attitude of “Sorry, try to do a guy a favor.” and mentions its all like a video game anyway, you win some and you lose some and sometimes the machine just eats your quarters.

Ends with Huer and Wilma just shaking their heads at how he’s supposed to be their savior in their fight against RAM.

And that’s it. Like I said, not much story, just more of an excuse to info dump world building. Still, I’m enough of a nerd to enjoy that sort of thing so it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, plus it’s pretty short.

The last 4 comics have Buck’s last real story and a secondary story featuring another character. I’ll actually go over the secondary story first though next post.

Wow, using the internet seems really dangerous. Glad my phone is too old for the 3D cyberwarrior holomatrix update.

This actually is a pretty cool setting though, shame it only ran a few issues.

Okay back to getting these done. As I said this next one will be the secondary story that ran in the last 4 issues and this one is all about everyone’s favorite space hooker, Ardala!

Sins of Ardala

It starts off with a page of no dialog, just panels of an older guy with a young blonde woman and showing her off in various states of undress to Ardala and some obvious negotiation on price.

After which the girl gets dressed and Ardala asking her does she realize what just happened. The girl says her name is Jasmine and understands that her dad and brothers just sold her and she’s now a slave. She says her name is Jasmine. Ardala makes some snide comments about her family not valuing her company much since they sold her at a low price and asks what her mom thinks about all this, but she says her mom is dead and they had to sell her because times were hard.

Gotta say, Jasmine’s taking her family’s decision pretty well all things considered.

So this being a pleasure planetoid and all, Ardala feels its necessary to ask the important questions.

“Sorta” Going to guess she's one of those that thinks taking it in the ass doesn’t count.

So after Ardy asks if Jasmine knows who she even is. Jasmine mentions she’s related to a rich RAM founding family and bought the asteroid to run a sex empire. This causes Ardy to laugh and an excuse for her to go into her entire origin story.

She mentions that she is related to the Valmar family, however she wasn’t born on Mars, she born on a backwater space colony called Starsalem.

Starsalem is basically like Amish Country for the 25th century since everyone there shuns the really high tech shit. It’s run by a cult like mindset called the Normanites. They’re all living like it’s the 20th century there, probably around 1980s.

So y’know the good old days.

Anyway Ardala’s dad “Ezra” had long since abandoned his rich RAM founding family to go join this cult where he worked a farm. Ardala and her older sister Hope helped out along with their mother Ruth. They had a farmhand Adam that assisted who was also set up to be Hope’s future husband. Ardala though was already a bit of a flirty troublemaker and would hit on him to piss off her sister.

Now it isn’t entirely clear if Adam would have actually fallen for Ardala or he just liked the extra female attention (Male ego and all) but such potential drama wasn’t to be since something worse was in store for Ardala.

Starsalem much like the Mormon community had a problem with the female to male ratio, though in Starsalem’s case it wasn’t due to marrying off a bunch of child brides to all the rich old dudes and nothing left for the young guys. It was a case of their shit primitive technology resulting in more females being born than males. Basically not enough guys to go around.

Well they weren’t going to implement Chinese policy of killing female babies, that would be barbaric. Their council just decided to sell off their excess teenage girls into slavery instead. Especially since despite all their bravado of rejecting cool technology, their little colony NEEDED superconductors to even stay alive. So girls for tech it was to solve both issues.

So the council leader Titus tells Ezra he’s gotta give up Ardala for the greater good. He doesn’t really want to and his wife even tells him to go call his rich RAM family to send him the money to buy the superconductors, but he’s all dedicated to being a culty so selling Ardala it is.

Ardala is in the middle of tormenting her sister about Adam liking her more and then her father walks in saying you’re getting sold for shit the colony needs. Ardala is understandably upset about this and argues before running off. Titus basically calls Ezra a faggot cuck that can’t keep his own daughter in line and this is just proof that they’ve made the right decision in getting rid of a girl that would be so selfish to put her needs first.

Ardala goes running off to Adam thinking that he might help her, but that’s a no go. He says he never loved her and he’s promised to Hope anyway. Ardala scratches his eyes like a cat and gets away as he’s trying to subdue her. She tries one last person, her mom, but her mom is in a dazed state of acceptance merely saying “It’s the will of the council and there is no choice, we must obey.” At this point Ardala is finally captured.

Next it shows Ardala with a few other young women being sold to some stereotypical looking sleezebag named Lazlo (Even the name) They’re heading off to an asteroid called “Pakki’s Pig Sty” and while all the other girls are afraid, Ardala’s still being defiant, even vowing that’s she’s going back to Starsalem one day to get revenge on Titus.

Lazlo meanwhile with his crew are ready to take a free sample of the goods so to speak. And by that I mean the rape is about to start. Ardala’s the only one who puts up a bit of a fight which Lazlo doesn’t even mind a bit. (Just makes it hotter right?)

“What followed was ugly, but mercifully short lived.” - Ardala

So after now also putting Lazlo on her shitlist, Ardala finally reaches Pakki’s which is run by this old Italian stereotype who has this transparent chest exposing his internal organs.

Anyway, they get sent to the head bitch in charge Molly, who explains that this is their life now and they better get used to being joy toys for the rest of their lives. But once again Ardala’s not going out like that and now has put Pakki on her shitlist as well.

End of part 1

Second part starts off with a full page panel of Ardala wrestling a pig in a mud pit explaining that her time at Pakki’s wasn’t easy since she definitely chose to do things the hard way. Didn’t matter what demeaning thing they had her do she wasn’t breaking.

Well it's not called Pakki's Pigsty for nothing

After catching the pig, Ardala leaves the small arena where she’s met by Molly saying she’s gotten too good at the game to the point where Pakki can’t even get anyone to bet against her anymore. Something that of course makes Ardala happy. Molly says she doesn’t understand how she manages to turn every humiliation into some personal triumph and then says that Ardala is immediately on waitress duty for her next task. Ardala’s a little surprised given that she still smells like pig shit, but Molly mentions that’s the idea. Pakki and Lazlo are holding a RAM executive for ransom and they want his stay to be unpleasant.

Ardala heads to the cells with food and in the cage is a character we’ve seen before Jonathan Titov. He’s not quite as high in the RAM hierarchy at this point and he’s pretty pissed about his situation since being captured is going to hurt his chances at a promotion and now he’s enduring the stench of Ardala.

Ardala at this point says she’s not also putting up with insults by prisoners and if he keeps it up she’s throwing the food at him. He immediately apologizes and explains himself a bit. Ardala and he talk and he’s privately amused when she mentions her last name is “Valmar” because there’s no way she could be related to such a prestigious family. Still he thinks maybe he’ll be able to use her in some way.

Meanwhile the other girls aren’t made of the same girl power material Ardala is and one in particular can’t stand it anymore and tries to escape only to nearly kill herself running into a laser security door. Ardala calls Molly for help, but Molly’s just like if the dumb whore wants to kill herself, why the fuck should she care.

It’s at this point however where Ardala establishes her queen bee moment and physically threatens Molly calling her a burned out whore and that she better help her. At this point Molly folds showing she was always more bark than bite and the girl’s life is saved despite the fact she wants to die. Ardala says she’s not letting any of them die and they’ll get back to Starsalem one day. She takes the girl’s shift in whoring since Pakki’s on their asses about customers getting served.

I read Pakki’s dialog in a stereotypical Italian voice and it’s hilarious

So later Ardala’s talking with Titov, asking how he got captured and what might be in it for her if she could manage an escape plan for him. Titov is cool with escaping, but he’s also concerned that if Ardy screws up this plan he could get killed. He feigns concern that SHE might get hurt being involved, but Ardy reassures him that she can pull it off. It also shows that despite her wily defiant ways, she’s still a bit naive when it comes to guys since she actually believes Titov is worried about her.

Ardala is now so enamored with Titov that she even foolishly blabs this to Molly who says she needs to check herself before Pakki spaces her for trying to pull a fast one on him and that she REALLY better not be thinking about helping him escape.

Ardala at this point sort realizes she needs to shut the fuck up and go back to plotting secretly since even though she’s cowed Molly into enough submission that she won’t rat on her directly, someone else might be listening. So she does the old bit where she tells Lazlo that Pakki is scheming against him and vice versa.

Neither of them are entirely convinced Ardala overheard these supposed it schemes, however criminal scumbags tend to have a lot of paranoia and distrust because well, they’re working with other criminal scumbags.

So the first thing that sets Lazlo off is he soon sees Pakki speaking with mercs and figures he’s going to be set up soon to be killed.

Lol struck impotent

Well doesn’t take long before Lazlo and his crew attack Pakki who is now surrounded by a bunch of mercs he’s hired. A shoot out ensues while Ardala frees Titov.

Too late for second thoughts now

They get to the hanger and Ardala thinks she can go grab the other girls and they can all escape together, however Titov says he only knows how to fly the long range courier that has ONE seat. Ardala’s spirits are a little dampened by this news, but Titov reassures her that he will come back for her.

And then promptly after he takes off, he thinks she’s a dumb delusional whore if she really believes such a thing.

Pity Pakki didn't invest in safety glass to protect his innards

Meanwhile Lazlo has barely won the shoot out, however while gloating over the dying Pakki he learns that Pakki only hired all the mercs in the first place because Ardala said Lazlo was plotting to kill him. Upon discovering this treachery, Lazlo tracks Ardy to the docking bay and says he owns Pakki’s place now but he can’t thank Ardala since she has to serve as a lesson for slaves to not plot against their master.

He throws her into the pig pit saying that they’ve devised a new twist on the game by genetically altering the pig which is now a mutant pig man.

It's going to be the REALLY hard way with the pigs now

Ardala however still is as defiant as ever, managing to blind the mutant, which doesn’t even anger Lazlo because this is all entertainment to put her through hell anyway. She refuses to beg for mercy though.

End of part 2

Next part starts off with Titov making it back to a RAM cruiser where they’re all a bit surprised to see him. He mentions how he easily escaped such brainless slugs and even mentions Ardala. One of the guards asks if they should do a background check on her last name, but he mentions she was some delusional whore so not to bother.

Titov gets some food and washed up before relaying his “magnificent escape” for the RAM report. His secretary mentions that the Ardala girl puzzles her and asks if she should do a background check to see if she’s real. Titov once again isn’t concerned but says if his secretary wants to waste her time then she can knock herself out, since he’s going to bed and doesn’t want to be woken up until they get to Mars.

Soon, the secretary wakes him up and says that Ardala IS a Valmar. A distant relative, but she’s still kinfolk. Immediately Titov can’t let a founding family member just rot away in a whore house so he has the ship turned around back to Pakki’s.

Meanwhile Ardala’s still fighting the mutant pig man and even though it’s blinded, its still wearing her down as Lazlo and the rest look on. The other girls wonder if they can do anything, but Molly as ever always playing it safe says they can’t do shit since even if Ardala wins, Lazlo isn’t letting her live.

Ardala is slowly getting choked out by the mutant and it’s looking grim for her as she’s starting to lose consciousness. And then Titov in full RAM armor (with a bunch of RAM terrines in front of him of course) storm the place blasting at Lazlo and his men. Titov of course wastes no time in rescuing Ardala personally who believes that he came back for her.

“Did you really think I’d forget?” - Titov

RAM executes Lazlo and the remainder of his men (Funny enough you don’t actually see Lazlo get offed, just him in the captured kneeling position while terrines standby with rifles) Titov is ready to take her back to Mars, but Ardala says her family is on Starsalem.

So they go to Starsalem, but the council leader Titus pulls the old Overseer routine and says they can’t come back to the vault. Even Ardala’s own father backs him up saying it was for the good of the colony bullshit.

Ardala mentions what happened to her and the other girls and Titus is like “Yeah we knew what would happen, but that’s a sacrifice we were willing to make for the colony and you hussies can’t come back because you’re damaged good now and you’ll scare all the other girls. Lol.”

Ardala flies into a rage saying she can’t be kept out forever prompting a smug response by Titus of how she was always a selfish girl thinking of herself and never belonged anyway.

Yeah even compared to Lazlo and Pakki, Titus is just way more of an asshole

So Titov mentions that Ardala does have family on Mars so he can take her there instead.

However, the matriarch of Valmar family isn’t all that thrilled to see her. She mentions that Ardala’s father renounced all his ties to the family long ago (And quite rudely too) so they can’t afford to be associated with the likes of her. Ardala says she can’t be blamed for that, to which the Matriarch says she’s not blaming her, and is instead offering her a modest stipend on the condition that she move to Luna and keep her mouth shut about her ties to the Valmar family.

Well in typical Ardala fashion of doing things the hard way she cusses out the Matriarch (Causing her to faint from such scandalous behavior) and declines the offer thinking maybe Titov can help her somehow.

She heads to Titov’s office only to find him speaking with his wife and toddler son. He’s a bit surprised to see her and quickly says to his wife how Ardala is one of the girls he rescued and is helping her get settled on Mars. (His wife believing that he’s such a good soul) He says he’ll speak with Ardy in a moment as he rushes his family out the door. Andy is now pissed about this situation since she at least figured she had a sugar daddy to count on.

While she’s waiting for him to return she starts snooping on his computer which has his RAM report about the rescue. She does a little digging and finds his original report which pretty much states that he had no intention of coming back at all if she hadn’t been a Valmar.

Titov comes back and says they can talk about the situation with her family and find a profitable arrangement for her. Ardala though has pretty much had it with penis havers from all walks of society and kicks titov in the balls. She then mentions she knows he was going to leave her to die originally and is now just trying to get in the good graces of the Valmar family. She plans to tell the Matriarch everything unless he helps her for realsies.

And this is where she lays out her plan. RAM currently controls Pakki’s pigsty, so she suggests that she covertly get RAM funds to build it up into a better quality whore house AKA Pleasure Planetoid. It can basically be a place where she can gather information to sell to RAM that they wouldn’t normally be able to acquire otherwise and since its in the asteroid belt it can keep an eye on the pirates and brigand’s league too. In addition to intelligence gathering, she’ll share some of the profits with RAM.

Titov is impressed enough with the idea that he agrees to help.

So the next step is Ardala needing some reliable whores…erm I mean “employees” for this new business venture. Naturally she goes to her Starsalem buddies (Who are still sort of in limbo seeing as they can’t go back home either) with this idea, but while they appreciate this offer they really don’t want to be whores anymore, they want the normal lives they thought they were going to have.

Ardala gets pissed about this thinking they’re being ungrateful, but surprisingly Molly calms her down saying not to be too hard on them since they were always “amateurs” at best anyway. Molly not really knowing any other life is on board with the plan saying she can easily get some seasoned volunteers for this sort of work. Which Ardala agrees might be best anyway.

However, in another anti-hero move she demands that Titov give all her Starsalem comrades a college education, new names, new files and a suitable husband on a different planet. Titov says fine, but it’s coming out her share of the profits, which Ardala is okay with since her private idea is now she’s got six more grateful well position spies on the inner planets.

End of part 3

Okay so we come to the last part which is more of a wrap up since Ardala’s basically overcome all her major challenges. She’s got the pleasure planetoid up and running where it’s serving its intended purpose and nobody can stop Ardala from using her family name as leverage against RAM. She goes on about basically achieving her goals of acquiring status, money and power so she’d never be a victim again. Mentions how certain clients had to be handled personally by her (Shows her slapping Black Barney) Kept in touch with her old starsalem buddies and their families (And their husband’s careers) Even says she made peace the rest of the Valmar family after the matriarch died.

And yet, there was still ONE thing left to deal with which was Starsalem itself.

As luck would have it, there was a thruster explosion that provided her opportunity.

The incident caused Starsalem to tilt away from the sun. Everyone is getting colder, crops are dying and Titus is being an asshole saying prayer will get them through this. However, eventually enough people are yelling that they need outside help on this which causes him to relent, but ONLY if the people are of good moral fiber. They send out a distress signal.

Molly picks it up and tells Ardala about it, but she seems uninterested about what’s happening and says she has to supervise a bachelorette party for Holoboy’s great-great-grand niece. Molly tells the crew that picked up the signal to not respond, but to keep her updated since she knows damn well that Ardala’s going to respond eventually.

And sure enough after Molly mentions again that the people are now starving, Ardala still says she’s not interested, but then quickly changes her mind saying it might be a hoot to visit the old homestead.

So Ardala heads to Starsalem with a bunch of rescue ships which confuses Molly of why she’s bothering to bring those if she’s just going there to gloat, which then causes Ardala to say she’ll save them IF they beg REALLY nicely. She also dresses up in one of her skimpier clothing choices since looking like a wanton woman will increase the shock value. Molly thinks she’s going to freeze her ass off though given how cold the place has reportedly gotten.

Ardala arrives and she greeted by one of the council members who’s full of thanks, but she’s still not convinced to help and she wants to see her parents first. They’re at the cemetery though. her mom died shortly after she was sold and her dad died some time between the last time he spoke to her and now. Her sister and sister's husband are still alive though.

Yep, get fat and old or become a youthful looking space hooker. The choice is clear ladies!

After she’s done laughing a little girl comes up to her saying she’s never seen her before. Ardala says she’s been away and asks who she is to which she says her name is “Ardy” which is the name her grandmother gave her before she died. Ardala realizes this is her niece so now she’s a little bit more motivated to help the colony. She tells the council members that met with her that she’ll save the colony, but they can’t be selling girls anymore.

At this point Titus pops up and starts calling Ardala every synonym for “whore” that he can think of all the while saying how dare she dictate morality to them. She tells him to shut the hell up and he continues on his tirade until suddenly he keels over dead.

He really was an asshole

After giving him a light kick, Ardala confirms he’s dead and the rest of the council is fine with making the deal with Ardala. Her ships pull the colony back into its original spot and she mentions that if they reneg on their promise of not selling girls, she’s sending Black Barney to enforce the contract.

With Starsalem saved thanks to her and seeing that old asshole Titus die Ardala finally got the last bit of her revenge.

All of which brings us back to her talking to Jasmine who is puzzled about if Ardala hates slavery so much why does she buy girls like her. Ardala responds doesn’t she know why she told the story in the first place. Jasmine figures it was supposed to give her hope that no matter how bad things are, she’ll survive.

“A good lesson, but the wrong one.” - Ardala

Ardala explains nobody does anything against their will on the pleasure planetoid. She’s going to enroll her in a school on Mars and she’ll get a good education at Olympus University. She’s no one’s slave and Molly will see to getting her prepared. Jasmine of course is now overjoyed by this news and how nobody’s been this kind to her since her mom died. She wonders how she’s ever going to repay her.

To which Ardala is already thinking that after everything is done, Jasmine will be so grateful she’ll be begging to join her spy network and THAT will be the return on her investment.

The End

So yeah, Ardala also had a more interesting story than Buck.

But we aren’t done yet, next story review will be the last one and we’ll see if Buck can beat out space pirates and space hookers. It’s a tall order, but anything’s possible.

Stay tuned!

Damn, this one gets a little dark. But this panel cracks me up:



That looks like a goof with a blank yellow narrator's box though.

Alright the exciting conclusion not just to the Buck Rogers comics, but to the entire failed TSR attempt at breaking into the comic business.

The Martian Wars

So this one starts with a brief one page history lesson since they really liked world building in these Buck comics. Basically it sort of explains how RAM managed to beat the chicken soup out of Earth in the first place during their war with each other and it’s all thanks to space station Hauberk.

Hauberk was built around the same time ye olde Masterlink was, but only Masterlink was fully operational at the time (1999). As the decades went on Hauberk was still worked on, upgraded and eventually bought by RAM. Which of course was part of their long term plan of using it against Earth when the war with them eventually happened. A war of course that they easily won because of it.

Now the station serves as the big dick that RAM likes to swing around the solar system to prove they’re the top dog and nobody can do anything about it. Especially Earth which it just routinely rapes since NEO is a constantly raiding RAM and generally being a nuisance to them.

This is all being explained by one of the NEO officers since one of the Colonel McGregor’s latest raids scored them basic info on the station. Most of the NEOs are celebrating this, but Buck is already tired of this plucky rebel shit that’s ultimately not proving too effective. Already he’s wanting to attack the station Luke Skywalker style. (And why not, Lucas based Star Wars on Buck anyway) Wilma says they need to be cautious though.

In the meantime, RAM is also tired of this plucky rebel shit and is about engage in war crimes on a planetary scale. the RAM officer commanding the Hauberk believes NEO has their secret base under one of the mega cities in this case “Chicagorg” and gives the order to basically blow it to shit. Just to show that not EVERY RAM employee is a raging psycho, the second in command asks what about all the innocent civilians.

“Yeah fuck’em for harboring terrorists. Lol.”

After the orbital bombardment, they send in the genetically altered super soldiers to mop up. Meanwhile most of the retarded civvie population doesn’t know who the hell is even attacking let alone why.

“But I voted for Holoboy!”

RAM eventually reaches the NEO secret hideout (or what’s left of it) where Buck and the survivors manage to take another tunnel to get to some hidden ships to escape. They hide out in some giant floating space junkyard nearby which is NEO’s only real off world base.

NEO’s pretty much fucked right now, once again Buck is of the mindset that they really need to take out the station. Somehow he’s the only one to have come up with the idea to try to send Doc Huer through the cybermatrix to try to find some sort of weakness (Like a vent to shoot a torpedo into). Doc doesn’t have too much luck until he stumbles upon an Ardala icon.

I find it more impressive that the Doc only managed to stumble on ONE porn site in his cyberweb travels.

So now they have to go see Ardala. Buck figures he can use his charisma stat to exploit Ardala’s past interest in him, Wilma being an unfun prude, doesn’t like the idea. And she likes it even less when they go meet with her and Ardala just has the whole negotiation process with them naked while getting a massage. Wilma really does act like a petty jealous bitch giving Buck some grief about looking at Ardala, when really it’s not like he could just be a blindy the entire time and he’s not Wilma’s boyfriend anyway. Buck’s not even particularly impressed by Ardy’s attention whore act, he’s a Chadly hero after all, he doesn’t need to simp for leg shavers. Hell he even thinks Wilma is jealous. (And she totally is)

So they go the info, but they some ships that can even stand a chance at attacking the thing. The best chance would be getting some of RAM’s own ships. Specifically their newest Kraits. This is where Buck mentioned Black Barney can probably manage to steal those. McGregor and most of NEO isn’t thrilled with Barney showing up (Who is more amused by the hatred like a proper anti-hero would be) and they’re all surprised he’s even willing to help without even getting paid for it, but Buck and Barney have an understanding all the way back when he “beat” him so it’s a manly code and all. Plus Barney’s a little bit of a lighter shade of gray than he used to be and doesn’t like RAM anyway.

Cut to Peg with a shitload of weapons, saying she was just going over their armory of what they’ll need for a raid on RAM’s shipyard, but Barney’s like fuck a suicide raid, they can get the ships with minimal effort by using RAM’s own labyrinthian bureaucracy against them.

Basically he fucking internet trolls RAM into just disposing of the ships as scrap. (Probably hard to read the image itself)

And this is why Barney will always be cooler than Buck

So now Buck and NEO have the ships and are making preparations to attack the station. Cut to Holoboy on Mars speaking with the Earth regent Allester about how he’s failing to eliminate NEO (While also having those 4 employees that Barney trolled being executed via firing squad for incompetence). Allester says his reports have been going unheeded about how much of a problem NEO have been and hasn’t been getting the back up he needs despite the fact got a fucking mini-death star and dimestore space marines. Holoboy says he’s sending Killer Kane to help out against Buck Rogers.

Later the planned attack on the Hauberk is soon in full swing. NEO and Barney launch their first strike against the station, taking out its warning satellites first.

I still love the fact that the slide pup is often somewhere in the pics with Barney and his crew

Meanwhile the commander of the Hauberk is screaming that they’ve been caught off guard despite him being an idiot that he wasn’t paying enough attention due to arrogance. All their major weapons are pointed at earth so the only thing they can do is launch their own ships to combat NEO while they try to readjust all their shit.

This goes about as well as expected, meaning not very well. Buck and NEO do some heavy damage to the station, however RAM’s not completely out of it yet since Killer Kane arrives with boasts about how this is NEO’s last gasp.

End of part one

Next part continues with the Hauberk battle now with Killer Kane in the mix. He and Buck are doing a lot of fancy maneuvers while all the shooting is going on, while Wilma and McGregor get their own ships into the Hauberk’s space dock to capture the thing. They surprisingly don’t come across many guard past the space dock which makes this a bit weird until they find out why when they make it to the control room.

They find a bunch of long dead skeletons sitting at the controls where upon you see the commander of the Hauberk in his own holo-mode saying RAM finds it more cost effective to just have a digital crew as opposed to rotating humans. The Hauberk is now on self destruct while the digital crew will escape through cyber matrix, meanwhile all the NEO forces aboard are trapped. Wilma sends a message telling Buck and the rest to clear out before the Hauberk explodes. Buck of course goes back to save Wilma by blasting the now locked space dock doors, meanwhile Kane’s also caught Wilma’s broadcast and figures he should get the hell out of the explosion range since there’s no point in risking his life at this point.

So Wilma and the rest do manage to escape and the Hauberk explodes into a million pieces. She’s already celebrating, but Buck is like, well hold on RAM isn’t exactly gone yet. Still with this victory, all of Earth is set to hold celebrations. Barney is invited, but he’s declines because he’s got a lot of enemies on Earth, plus he’s more interested in looting the remains of the Hauberk.

Duncan McGregor makes some announcement that RAM must stop hostilities towards Earth immediately and Holoboy makes a big show of not really realizing that Earth valued its independence and how an ongoing war would cut into RAM profit so he agrees to a honorable peace treaty.

Next up is showing various earth mega cities celebrating in their own way, though a place like Chicagorg is still mourning their dead considering it wasn’t long ago it got blasted to shit. Meanwhile the former Earth regent Cherneko is staying on Mars, however he sends his top security officer Col. Smirnoff to go assist Earth in its rebuilding process.

So Smirnoff shows up with a squad of terrines under the white flag claiming he pledges allegiance to NEO in exchange for a pardon. He says that earth needs a police force during this transitional time of power and he can assist with that, and how he’s willing to help because RAM’s looking to scapegoat him anyway. While most of NEO is ready to string him upside down for warcrimes, for some reason Duncan agrees to this provided there’s a NEO observer with his force at all times. And he makes some comment of how the white flag has to be honored and NEO can’t just go ignoring shit like that if they want to be seen as the “good guys” here.

Yeah this is without a doubt the biggest fucktard move ever by NEO which is saying something given how RAM handled the Hauberk station situation. Especially since Smirnoff is known to be the worst of the RAM thugs.

Well you might expect this is all just a big show while RAM maneuvers its forces to take major revenge on getting their station blown up. If it wasn’t for Barney seeing the fleet on his scanner while looting the Hauberk’s remains, NEO wouldn’t have even got the last minute warning that they do get.

Yeah they really trusted a guy who looks like this to not immediately backstab them

Doesn’t take long for RAM to do what they do best which is genociding entire populations. They hit all the major cities, though Holoboy wants the Statue of Liberty removed intact before they start turning New York into slag. (It’s still a very nice statue after all these centuries) Though it looks like the ancient Aztec and Inca temples didn’t get the same consideration of preserving ye olde culture. And RAM fucks up Chicago again because well it was so much fun the first time around and NEO still has their main base there for the same reason they thought RAM was going to honor a peace treaty, they’re fucking stupid.

Wilma and Buck barely manage to escape with Duncan and some other NEO stragglers back to the space junkyard they were at before. They’re also more fucked than they were before and Buck’s like we gotta get a bigger fleet to even liberate Earth now.

So now the plan is to get a grand alliance going, something they really should have thought about before. Buck tells Barney to go raise a merc army from the asteroid belt, which is like how the hell is he expecting to pay them, but he’ll try anyway.

Wilma gets sent to Luna to go convince the eurofag style government there to support NEO independence or at least stay neutral in the conflict if they won’t help.

Buck’s heading to Venus to go convince the biggest city state/nations Ishtar and Aphrodite to join the fight against RAM, but he’s warned that that’s going to be a pretty difficult task seeing as they hate each other as much as they hate RAM.

Finally Doc Huer gets sent to Mercury to try to get an audience with the Sun Kings for their help.

So they all set off. Huer immediately starts getting the feeling that he’s being scanned through the cybermatrix and thinks maybe RAM has started deploying hunter/killer programs. We do see the bulky figure watching from the “shadows” though. No confirmation on who or what this is, but he says something that implies he’s up to no good.

Wilma isn’t doing so great with the Lunarian government which is insisting on her filling out paper work to even get a meeting with the department that sets up meetings with officials. While she take a break from this, she bumps into Kane of all people. He’s all friendly and even invites Wilma back to his place where she can stay seeing as NEO is seemingly on death’s door. Wilma of course isn’t having it and says she’d vaporize him on the spot if it wasn’t for Lunarian laws that frown very much on off worlder violence. (Plus she thinks to herself that she’s still got some fee fees for him, which is amusing since she’s already jealous whenever Ardala is flashing her tits at Buck)

Cut to a scene later at Kane’s home where a RAM employee (With a good 80s villain name “Dragos”) is trying to hire Kane to kill Wilma while she’s on here. Kane however won’t do it, not so much because he cares for Wilma, but more for the fact that Luna is his only refuge in the solar system. If he fucks up and gets caught breaking Luna laws he’s losing his safe space so it’s not worth it at all to him.

Dragos basically calls him pussy and this will go as a black mark on his PERMANENT RECORD in the RAM files, but Kane doesn’t give a shit. So Dragos decides he’s going to have to do the job himself and take credit for it. Dragos though isn’t that great on subtlety and Wilma figures out he’s following her almost immediately. However, in her haste to give him the slip, she actually falls into his cunning trap and she runs right into some large deathbot he’s controlling and planning to kill her with.

It also cuts to Buck at Venus where he’s meeting one of the Ishtar viceroys and they’re supposed to go to meet with the heads of Ishtar and Aphrodite, but they get attacked by some RAM agents which manage to down their ship. Worse news since they crash in the lower atmosphere on Venus where there’s not just the air to worry about, but the lowlander scalies to worry about too.

Unsurprisingly they immediately bump into a tribe of the lizard folk.

End of part 2

This one starts off with Wilma facing a grim situation of either getting killed by the giant murderbot or shot by the RAM agent. Fortunately for her, Kane comes in to help her out by shooting the agent and shutting down the robot. She doesn’t trust him at first, but he mentions he’s protecting his own ass by making sure he isn’t in any way connected to RAM’s assassination attempt shenanigans. However then he pulls the smooth move of saying he also still cares about her and kisses her. Wilma being Wilma feels like she should hate him, but she can’t quite do it yet because she can never make up her damn mind on the whole what guy she should be having the panting hots for at any given time.

Meanwhile the Luna government has already caught wind of the whole RAM assassination attempt mainly because the agent was dumb enough to use a big ass killer robot instead of y’know something that calls less attention. As a result Luna gets pissed at RAM for dragging their drama into their home so they declare themselves neutral in the conflict with NEO and send a scolding text to RAM (No seriously they actually do that)

Back to Buck who is sitting in a scalie cage with viceroy Ali. The scalies say they could rip their envirosuits and watch them die quick, but it’s more fun to watch them die slow as their suits slowly lose oxygen. Buck however recognizes a bunch of tribals when he sees them so he challenges them to prove that they’re supposed to be the honorable folk he’s always heard they were supposed to be.

Well the chieftain hears about this and gets indignant that some oxygen breather should be going on about honor, let alone any sort of equality since their territory is getting slowly destroyed by oxygen breathers as time goes on. In any case, he doesn’t think Buck can even beat his daughter in the tribe’s registration voter’s rights challenge.

So he calls his daughter who isn’t quite as “primal” as the rest of her tribe.

Considering the lowlanders tend to live in the valleys of Venus, I’m going to guess this was a joke to have her talk like an 80s “Valley Girl”

The chieftain’s daughter really isn’t into this plan since besides her wanting to hang out with her friends and talk about boys and clothes, the voter registration rite is fucking dangerous and she protests that she’s not supposed to take it until she’s 18 claiming she’s too young for it.

Her dad doesn’t want to hear it though, she’s gotta do this for the honor of the tribe and to show up this filthy oxygen breather, so she reluctantly agrees though she doesn’t understand why they can’t just kill Buck directly.

Her and Buck basically have to descend down a hole on a series of hanging vines where there’s lava at the bottom. The closer you get to the lava, the more your vote counts in the tribe. In this case though she’s supposed to just be showing how much braver she is than Buck by getting closer to the bottom.

As much as she doesn’t want to do this, she’s at least got more of an advantage than Buck seeing as she’s not encumbered by a slowly failing envirosuit. Unfortunately for her, the heat of the lava burns through one of the ropes she’s climbing down on. Fortunately for her, Buck ever the hero manages to save her from falling into the lava by…grabbing her tail. Lol.

While the chieftain is yelling about saving his daughter, Buck manages to get her back to the top. Her dad mentions normally grabbing scalie ass results in immediate execution or marriage, but an exception will be made and Buck is free to go. Though the scalie daughter seems a bit smitten with Buck now seeing as he grabbed her tail and all.

Hey Buck watch out, she’s not even 18 yet that’s scalebait!

Buck and Ali get out of the lowlander ghetto where they’re soon rescued and can continue to the meeting.

Next bits are a combo of a lot of negotiating. Huer speaks with the Sun Kings saying that their fleet would help greatly since their ships virtually have an unlimited power supply via THE SUN. The Sun Kings basically have some sort of frequency that solar powers their ships directly anywhere in the galaxy. This was supposed to be a secret, but one of the Sun Kings, Gordon isn’t too fussed about Huer having learned this info. He’s basically says he’ll still help, but only if Venus joins the fight too.

Meanwhile Buck is trying to convince Ishtar and Aphrodite that together they could finally break the grip RAM has on the solar system. They still aren’t quite convinced though, mentioning they distrust each other too much to risk their fleets. Fortunately it’s around this time Huer comes to Buck via the matrix saying the Sun Kings are on board if Venus is. Upon hearing this news, it sways both Venus factions more, but they still want assurance that NEO can even win before joining.

So now Buck, Wilma and Duncan are trying to figure what would push things over to convince everyone that they can win this war. Still no word from Barney yet and the merc fleet he was working on, but Duncan has already written him off. At this point Ardala video calls up Buck, while taking a bath of course.

She mentions she’s got some info on RAM for Buck and the price is quite small. Basically she wants him to spend a month on her pleasure planetoid. Naturally Wilma is already in jealous bitch mode. Buck however always sees the bigger picture and even manages to negotiate just how long he’s gotta spend flicking Ardala’s bean. He says he’ll spend a week only if the info is good which Ardala says its the best ever!

She mentions that RAM’s board of directors are heading to her planetoid for a business holiday. They’re basically going to unwind a bit before the genocide of Earth begins in full force.

Wilma and Duncan being fucking retards claim this info is useless, but Buck is like “We can go capture them as hostages before they get to Ardala’s place.” Then all of a sudden Duncan’s cheering on this plan while Wilma’s claiming its an insane plan. One wonders how the hell did they even get as far as they did before Buck got defrosted.

Doesn’t take long before Buck manages to capture the RAM ship carrying the board. While he’s searching the ship for anyone hiding he bumps into Holoboy who looks pleased to see him. Buck tells Holoboy that if he doesn’t give up, he’s going to start spacing the hostages. Holoboy however is fine with this. He mentions that this incident has worked in his favor since with the board entirely gone, he can have complete control over RAM and not have to worry about any other opinions. He then escapes through the cybermatrix.

Buck tells Wilma that they’ll keep Holoboy’s response a secret for now and hope Venus joins the battle with the news of the board’s capture.

This news does indeed tip the scale enough that Venus joins. Huer is on his way back from the Sun Kings, but every time he’s in the matrix, he’s always sensing like he’s being scanned and its getting stronger. His concerns are soon proven right when he’s sitejacked by someone.

This someone turns out to be a man named Kemal who is not only the leader of Mercury’s rebels (Mentioned in the Black Barney story) but he’s also the nephew of Sun King Gordon and the true heir to the throne.

Kemal explains that NEO is a pawn in Gordon’s greater plan of taking over the entire solar system. The plan basically consists of betraying the alliance fleet and allowing RAM to overrun Earth and Venus. However in doing this RAM will stretch their own forces way too thin allowing Mercury’s relatively untouched forces to conquer Mars with their super solar powered ships.

Huer thanks Kemal for this info and rushes back to the matrix to go warn Buck, however he’s having a harder time traveling through it due to RAM restricting the flow of information. He hops on some old circuit link and soon finds himself trapped. He thinks it might be RAM or even Gordon, but he soon learns who has been stalking him all this time.

I like how even Karkov’s digital form is a bit zombified looking compared to other holofolks you see

While Huer is dealing with ghosts in the machine, the big battle is about to begin. NEO, Venus and Mercury on one side and RAM on the other. Of course when the fighting actually starts, doesn’t take long before Mercury’s fleet to start firing on the alliance leading to cries of betrayal. Buck tells Wilma they have to just salvage the situation and try to make do.

And this bit ends with Killer Kane showing up again helping RAM and making boasts about putting Buck out of action for good.

End of part 3

The big battle continues with Kane and Buck doing the whole dogfight in space thing. Though Wilma helps out leading to Kane whine about how could she do this to him after all they meant to each other. Whether this was a poor or stupid attempt at playing to her sympathies she’s unmoved.

Meanwhile zombie Karkov is going on to Huer about how he’s been spending 500 years regaining his power and he’s delighted to find out that Buck is also still around so he can get some revenge.

Huer manages to convince Karkov to let him go so he can do something about the Sun King betrayal that’s going to destroy the alliance. And if he doesn’t get that chance, then Buck will die and Karkov will never get his revenge. This is a reasonable request since Karkov comes from the old villain school of “Only I get to kill my nemesis” so he lets Huer go and vows after all this, he’ll be back to kill Buck.

It’s obvious Karkov had been set up as the next major villain arc for Buck, as far back as the info dump story when Huer finds Karkov’s digital grave open. Of course since this is the last comic, we never see that happen. Oh well.

Huer gets back to Prince Kemal saying he was too late to warn of the betrayal, however they can still stop the Sun King fleet by fucking up their satellite that’s beaming the solar power. Kemal is a bit reluctant to do this since it seems more like treason to go against his entire planet rather than just his evil uncle, but it doesn’t take him long to decide that his uncle will be even harder to beat if he manages to take over the solar system. (Not to mention he’s already fucking leading a rebellion against the crown, he’s already considered a “traitor” in the eyes of the current government!)

While the Prince is getting ready to shut down the source of the Sun King fleet, Buck is still dealing with Kane while the rest of the alliance is slowly breaking apart. Both Venusian fleets start leaving this shitshow thanks to the betrayal and NEO’s not doing too great on its own. The only plan now for NEO is to help Venus forces in their retreat (Duncan always has this dumb honor thing)

Then the tide turns again.

Prince Kemal manages to successfully raid the Sun King satellite and shut down the power which causes all the Sun King ships to shutdown. This allows the Venusian ships a chance to escape which in turn pisses off RAM enough to believe Gordon has betrayed him so RAM focuses on blasting the Sun King fleet while it’s dead in space. A RAM officer ask Holoboy if it wouldn’t be better to focus on NEO since they’re still active, but Holoboy feels NEO isn’t even a threat at this point, meanwhile there’s never been a better chance to knock Mercury down several pegs.

Meanwhile Gordon’s losing his shit back home wondering who the hell has fucked up his grand scheme.

Next up Black Barney finally shows up with his mercenary space pirate fleet explaining it took him awhile to “convince” everyone but he’s here now. This is enough to convince the Venusian fleets that the battle can be won so they return to the battle. Kane at this point thinks things are looking a bit grim for RAM so he takes off with his own mercs. Things do indeed start going badly for RAM so Holoboy decides to pop back into the matrix and head back to the Mars mainframe saying he’s suddenly remembered an important meeting to attend.

So RAM’s lost the advantage and pulls their fleet back to Mars, which of course is heavily defended to the point that attacking them isn’t really feasible. This is still a minor victory, but all RAM is going to is restock and build up their forces again and can afford to do it a lot quicker than the Alliance can. Their space elevator allows them to do this since in reality they don’t have enough shuttles to resupply their entire fleet and maintain interplanetary trade.

Duncan McGregor as usual just whines about how they can’t do anything about this. (Seriously next to Wilma, he’s easily the most annoying character in this short-lived Buck comic.) Buck’s idea however is to fuck up their space elevator for good and focus on that as their main target. It’ll at least halt their war machine efforts. Duncan says this is suicide, but everyone else is on board so he goes along with the majority.

So the alliance starts bum rushing the space elevator though it’s mostly NEO rebels and Barney’s pirates that are doing the boots on the ground attack (Or jetpacks in the space in this case)

Another wholesome slidepup reference

There’s a lot of fighting, with RAM starting overwhelm them with wave after wave of terrines, Buck and Wilma head down a secret access tunnel to get to the surface of the space elevator where Holoboy and some terrines are ready to greet the two.

Buck immediately says if they do anything he’s setting off a mini-nuke he’s carrying with Wilma. He further goes on to say that RAM needs to completely stop all hostilities or he’s doing it anyway. Holoboy isn’t impressed by this suicide mission. He reminds them he won’t be killed in the blast anyway and will just pop up elsewhere so he doesn’t care.

Buck however says he thinks he will care seeing as without the elevator RAM’s profit margin are going to crash hard just like what happened to Venus when they destroyed their space elevator decades ago and the board of directors isn’t going to like that, especially if  they also learn that he was willing to sacrifice them all.  Holoboy is surprised that Buck actually spared the Board (He obviously confused Buck with Barney) and is a bit concerned now seeing as that might pose a bit more of an issue with his immortality.

Still even with these concerns, Holoboy isn’t entirely convinced they’ll actually do it.

So Buck tells Wilma isn’t been nice knowing her and presses some buttons to start a countdown. There’s a series of panels of the timer approaching zero, Buck holding Wilma and Holoboy looking increasingly more worried.

And eventually he flinches and tells them they win and to shut down the bomb because RAM can’t afford to lose their profit margin. He goes on to make an announcement that officially relinquishes all control over earth and its resources. All RAM forces will withdraw from Earth and no further hostilities will be taken against NEO and any of its allies in this conflict. This official announcement is coincided by panels of the various reactions. Earth is of course pleased to get their freedom (For realsies this time), the pirates are happy that they’re getting out of this alive and unjailed, the Venus factions don’t give a shit about Earth, but are happy that they now stand a bit more toe to toe with RAM economically. And finally Sun King Gordon is still tearing up his own castle swearing vengeance on whoever sabotage his fleet. (The biggest losers in all this lol)

So now cut to Buck and Wilma talking and she’s inviting Buck to the Earth celebration, but he’s like nah he’s gotta keep his promise to Ardala to spend a week on her planetoid. A hero always keeps his word after all. Wilma of course is pissed about this and storms off. She bumps into Huer who is wondering what she’s mad about and she says how that “Cro-Magnon would rather suck face with a space tramp than celebrate with her.”

Wow, the dude saves the solar system from Holo Corpo Overlords and she’s still giving him shit over this. She still ain’t put a ring on it and y’know Ardala might be a big space hooker, but she’s still more likable than Wilma.

In any case, Huer mentions not to be too much of a judgmental bitch towards Buck since he’s got something planned. He whispers something to Wilma, who seems to find whatever he’s told her amusing.

Cut to Buck at Ardala’s and as usual she’s already naked and in her pool. He’s taking off his own clothes to get in with her and mentions that he hopes she doesn’t mind that he’s invited a few friends.

Y’know there’s nothing saying Buck didn’t still fuck Ardala. The ancient historical records never mentioned Buck liked to have folks watching him while engaged in sex and Ardy seems like she’d be more up for that than Wilma. All heroes have their quirks!

And that’s all folks!

So yeah I think Buck managed to go out on a good note with this last story. He certainly was the main one driving the war against RAM. If it hadn’t been for him NEO would have gotten the chicken soup beaten out of them back in the first issue of this arc.

As I mentioned way back when I was reviewing the Intruder comic, this last Buck issue was doubled up with the last Intruder one. (That flip upside down to read the other comic gimmick) The Buck side had a final message from the staff explaining how this was their last comic and how they had big ambitions, but the comic business is tougher than it looked and the way they were doing comics was just too fucking expensive.

So they were pulling out of this endeavor though they were still open to the idea of doing comics because they enjoyed it while it lasted. They said they were going back to the drawing board to figure out what they needed to do to make it viable and that they’d be back.

Um, no.

TSR would get bought out by Wizards of the Coast in a few more years which then in turn would get bought out by Hasbro shortly after that. RAM won after all.

And now we got shitty D&D settings with gay dwarves, gay Mexican orcs, and scenarios setting up gay magic high school proms for gay dates and everyone using gay ambiguous pronouns.

Maybe it’s for the best Buck missed all this. Lol.