Review: Money Shot vol. 1
Money Shot, Vol. 1by Tim Seeley, Sarah Beattie, Rebekah Isaacs, Kurt Michael Russell
Series: Money Shot #1
Also in this series: Money Shot Vol. 2
Publisher: Vault Comics
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
Genres: Graphic Novel
Pages: 160
Source: Edelweiss
I received an advance review copy of this book from Edelweiss. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
My rating:
In the near future, space travel is ludicrously expensive and largely ignored. Enter Christine Ocampos, inventor of the Star Shot teleportation device with a big idea: She'll travel to new worlds, engage--intimately--with local aliens, and film her exploits for a jaded earth populace trying to find something new on the internet. Now, Chris and her merry band of scientist-cum-pornstars explore the universe, each other, and the complexities of sex in MONEY SHOT!
A story about scientists having sex with aliens for the glory of mankind--and money.
I’ll be honest – the idea of scientists who decide to produce alien sex videos to fund their work discovering new planets was absolutely hilarious to me. I’ve read and loved some pretty crazy things before and this fits right in!
This absolutely bananapants comic follows scientists Bree Wander (“Constance Planck”), physicist; Annie Leong (“Trinity Spheres”), epidemiologist; Omar Steinberg (“Kneels Bore”), astrophysicist; Doug Koch (“Supermassive Blackhole”), biochemist; and Christine Ocampo (“Tesla Coyle”), physicist. Chris convinced the others to work on Star Shot, a device that can allow humans to travel to other planets, but between an anti-science administration and a recession, funding is running out, and everyone’s annoyed at her. Until she gets a brilliant idea – she’ll have subscribers pay to watch the scientists explore strange new worlds and, uh, screw aliens. For their initial mission, they arrive on the planet Dry Reef looking for the Bokai Elder, who apparently possesses knowledge of a technique that will allow them to release the power of nuclear fission with an orgasm, giving them a new power source for the Star Shot. But things don’t go exactly as planned with their whole “make love not war” mission, exposing fault lines in their relationships and possibly jeopardizing the whole mission.
Chris is the main focus of the story, and since she and Omar were previously in a relationship, their feelings for each other complicate things. There’s also a definite something between Bree and Chris, even if Bree mostly acts like she can’t stand her. The rest of the characters aren’t as well fleshed out, something that I hope is remedied in later volumes, though a good portion of one of the earlier issues is spent with each of them getting comfortable one-on-one. The humor in general is pretty silly and about what you’d expect, given the plot. Little Shot, the little camera drone who’s responsible for filming their escapades and translating alien languages, was especially adorable and hilarious, and Doug can always be counted on for a crude joke. The drawings are detailed and the color palettes lovely, from the oranges on Dry Reef to the more commonly used blues. I loved the character designs, from the humans to the aquatic-inspired aliens. Yup, that’s right, fish-people, not to mention orca and squid people.
Overall, this was a hilarious and absolutely gorgeous volume, and I’ll definitely be picking up the next one.
