It might be time to start looking a nice quiet home to put me in, because I completely forgot about buying the previous issue of this series (and reviewing it!) at SPACE last year and almost bought that issue again for my recent trip to Columbus. But I didn’t, I bought the most recent issue, so I should be able to take care of feeding and clothing myself for a few more years yet. Like the previous issue, this one also has a series of short stories, which is pretty much my favorite type of mini. Big ongoing stories don’t work well with the sporadic publishing schedule of most minis, and a single story covering the whole mini can be good or bad. But multiple stories? Well, there’s pretty much always gold in there somewhere. This one starts off with a story of Condor Blue, an intergalactic bounty hunter/detective. I’ve rarely been this conflicted about not spoiling the ending to a story, because I really do love it so, so I’ll just say that this one ends like I wish most dramatic confrontations with bad guys in a movie would end. If you can puzzle out the actual ending from that, congratulations! Next up is a story about the Bogman, who is, you guessed, a swamp creature. Also mixed up in this is a young lady who’s looking for love and finds it in a very strange place. But how is her father and the torch wielding mob going to take the romance? Then there’s the story of the kids who always sit on the bench during their basketball games finally having enough and taking a bunch of steroids to try to level the playing field, but these particular steroids have some serious side effects. Finally there’s Ug-Tar the Destroyer, which is basically a three page Conan parody, but at least it’s a funny one. “And more,” like the cover says, but I’ll let the single page stories be surprises for you. It’s funny, it’s gross, it’s occasionally alarming. Give it a chance, says I. And since he’s selling bundles of the first three issues of this series, and since I already like #2 and #3, it wouldn’t be the biggest gamble in the world to give the whole bundle a shot. $8 ($18 for the bundle)
