Other Stuff Monthly #15

So, back in the Tokyopop-led English-translated manga boom of the early 2000s, one of the titles that really caught my eye and my imagination was actually a Korean comic, Ragnarok, by Lee Myung-Jin. It's a fantasy comic with amazing art, and it's probably less well-known than its spin-offs: the MMORPG Ragnarok Online, and the TV anime Ragnarok The Animation (which was based on the MMORPG, rather than the comic, but I'll return to that subject later).

Re-reading it as an adult, it definitely feels like a case of style over substance. Luckily, the style is good enough for that not to really matter. The art is consistently excellent, and though most of the comic is made of characters either firing big magic attacks at each other, or dramatically delivering exposition to ach other, it all looks so good that you barely even notice. Me and my friends definitely didn't back then, at least. The look of the world is a very videogamey mix of European and Asian fantasy aesthetics, with a slight bit of sci-fi flavour on the weapons and armour, which all appear to be made of some kind of very smooth, curved, futuristic materials.

Teenage me was very disappointed, of course, when after the tenth volume, Ragnarok just seemed to stop coming out. I even e-mailed Tokyopop! They actually did reply, and even more interestingly, they told me the real reason as to why volume eleven wasn't out yet: the creator was making so much money from Ragnarok Online that he was focussing on that instead of his comic. How disappointing! There was even an interview with him in the back of the fourth volume, in which he describes his plans for Ragnarok: a 40-50 volume saga with seven story arcs! Tokyopop were clearly behind the series, too: I remember it being heavily promoted by them at the time, and they also added an unusual extra to the volumes themselves: psuedo-Dungeons and Dragons stats for all the main characters! (Well, they said the stats wee just "inspired by the manga" and not part of any real RPG system. But they look closest to DnD, at least.)

More disappointment came when the anime came out, and it was based on the MMORPG rather than the comic itself. Even now, I'm not interested in online games, but back then, I didn't even have a computer or internet connection at home! Not only that, but it really did feel like the last nail in the coffin of the original Ragnarok story and its characters. Well over a decade later, and I'm pretty sure Ragnorok Online is long dead by now, too, and I haven't heard anything about the comic coming back, either. RIP Ragnarok!

Other Stuff Monthly #14!

So, a while ago, I discovered the Japanese youtuber Crafty Transformer, who makes cool mechanical weapons and machinery (mostly recreated from videogames and anime) out of cardboard. Coupled with my ever-increasing love of tokusatsu, it's made me think "I want to make cool things too". At some point, I also became aware of the subject of today's post, a Japanese children's book entitled Saikyo Kosaku Craft Wars.

The book contains instructions on how to make various toys out of household objects, a long-standing tradition of kids' media the world over, of course. The gimmick here though is that all the items are tied into various stories that are told alongside the instructions. Of course, I can't read the stories, but they're accompanied by some really awesome artwork, and the instructions on how to make the things are mostly diagram-based anyway.

There's two basic types of thing to be made from the instructions in the book: weapons and armour for kids to use themselves, and smaller-scale spaceships and monsters and things. I'm really just interested in the weapons and armour, to be honest, to learn the bare basics, then figure out ways of making them bigger, better, and more mechanically complex. There's swords, shields, guns, claw-gauntlets, and so on. Regarding the guns, there's non-firing guns that just look cool, a bazooka that fires a missile made from paper cups, and a magic blaster that shoots a puff of air. I haven't even started to attempt making anything from the book yet, and I've already been thinking of ways to make the last two more powerful than the book's blueprints.

As, like I said, I haven't made anything from the book yet, there's not much more to say. It's a cool little book with some really amazing artwork in it (which was actually the main initial thing that caught my attention). And, you know, it's been pretty hard to get stuff for these monthly posts what with the ongoing boring apocalypse.

Other Stuff Monthly #13!

As soon as I saw the sun-baked Carlos Ezquerra cover art for El Mestizo, and its yellowed brick-effect logo, I was drawn into it. When I heard the premise, of a mixed-race mercenary fighting in the American Civil War, my interest was peaked even more. Of course, I wasn't let down when I did eventually get ahold of it, as it's a great action story, with no slow moments or filler.

I did have some questions, though, and they're probably the same questions you're thinking about after reading the premise. Mainly: why would a mixed-race former slave act as a mercenary in the Civil War, instead of just fighting against the Confederacy? Well, the story does offer a few answers to this, and I guess they're good enough to allow the reader to get into the action. Basically, it was a pretty anarchic war, and there were some companies in the Union army who were essentially uniformed raiders, pillaging small towns and killing everyone in sight, including the slaves they were meant to be freeing. So El Mestizo is portrayed as a man who'll fight on the side of whoever pays him, but also against anyone who he sees to be harming the innocent, no matter which side's uniform either of the above is wearing. I think another thing that should be taken into account is that most young boys in 1970s Britain probably didn't know or care much about the American Civil War, and it was, to them, just a change of scenery from all the World War II war comics that were popular at the time.

The book's only about sixty-four pages long, but in the old British comics tradition, chapters were only a few pages long each anyway, so not only is the storytelling very dense and full of action, but there manages to be a few complete story arcs in that small space! Mestizo avenges murdered slaves, saves North America from the bubonic plague, and manages to see the end of the Civil War, all in the page space of two or three US-style comic issues! The book even ends on a hook for a sequel that (as far as I know) never came about, set in Mexico.

Obviously, I recommend that anyone interested in comics that cover subject matter outside of the usual stuff gives El Mestizo a read. Like I've already said, it's tightly written, full of action, and the art is esecially excellent, exactly the kind of stuff Carlos Ezquerra seems to have been born to draw.

Other Stuff Monthly #12!

Wow, it's the twelfth installment of Lunatic Obscurity's least-popular feature, Other Stuff Monthly! So why not talk about the item that inspired it, a 1980s Dragonball tabletop game, which I think is called Goku's West City Uproar? See, I bought this game on a whim after seeing it listed for one solitary Yen on Yahho Auctions Japan, and it being a piece of merch of the world's most popular cartoon that I'd never seen before, thought it mght make an interesting subject to review or at least post about somewhere at some point.

Having not yet had the idea for Other Stuff Monthly, I put it away and forgot about it, until recently! When my landlord found it as he was clearing out the spare room. Now, there's a reason this rare old toy was so cheap, and that's because it is in very poor condition. There's several parts missing, most of which are just cosmetic, but two are very much essential to play: the balls.

If you've ever seen the game that's known in the UK as Screwball Scramble, in which the player races against the clock, using switches to operate various gizmos on a board to get a ball bearing through an assault course as quickly as possible, Goku's West City Uproar is a game like that, except instead of a single player racing against the clock, it's two players racing against each other. I did try to rectify this omission though, by ordering a couple of ball bearings online, but unfortunately, they're just slightly too big to fit through the tunnels on the board, and just slightly too heavy to jump off of the little lifting pokey sticks high enough.

In testing the game with the replacement balls, I also found out another thing wrong with my copy of the game: some of the parts which are supposed to move up and down when a player pushes a lever don't do anything at all. So even if I got some more appropriately-sized orbs, it still wouldn't matter. I've taken some pictures (with the griny PS Vita camera, as always), but that's all I can really say on this post. Please look forward to  many more installments of this feature, whether you want them or not!

Other Stuff Monthly #11!

Because the last post was a few days late due to technical problems, it's already that time of the month where I look at a non-videogame item of interest. Not only that, but the next post will be the annual April fools non-obscure videogame! But anyway, what's this month's item? It is at least slightly videogame related, since it's a miniature replication of a classic electromechanical arcade game from Namco!

Namely, it's a replica of Wani Wani Panic, which is also known as Gator Panic or Wacky Gator. I'm sure most of you who are old enough to remember the 1990s would have probably seen it in arcades back then. It's a whack-a-mole style game, where crocodiles come back and forth, in and out of some tunnels, and you bop as many as you can with a hammer within the time limit. The replica is a fancy papercraft kit with some plastic battery-powered innards, and unfortunately, it's not a product you can just easily buy: it was a free gift with an issue of youchien (or, kindergarten), a magazine for young children. As such, it actually came with two skins: the classic one which I used, and another one themed around the latest Doraemon movie, Eiga Doraemon: Nobita no Shin Kyouryuu (Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's New Dinosaur).

It might be a little hard to tell from my grainy PS Vita photography, but the built kit looks great. It's bright and colourful, and does a surprisingly good job of looking like the original machine, despite being made of card instead of metal and plastic. I'm very pleased with it, and I hope that it's sturdy enough to last for many years. It's not perfect, though. A big flaw is one that I won't have to deal with again: it was really hard to put together. It's not a problem I had with the very simple Panelki kit I posted about previously, but this was a much more complex kit, and there were a lot of times when I had difficulty getting tabs through slots. The problem is that you need to be quite firm, but it's scary being too firm, in case you just smash your thumb right through a panel and ruin the whole thing. I should mention that I had no trouble following the instructions, though. You put the numbered tab into its matching slot, and that's pretty much it.

The other big problem I have with the kit is that there's no randomness in how the crocodiles come out. There's a very short pattern that repeats over and over until time is up, and it makes this more of a fancy novelty ornament than a real home version of the arcade game. I know I'm being a little nitpicky with a kids magazine gift, and like I said, it is a really great-looking toy, but it's still a disappointment. Overall, though, I have to say I'm pleased with this, simply because it does look great, and someday I hope I'll be in a situation where I have lots of shelf space for it to look nice on, and I'll just keep hoping that someday I'll encounter a real one of the machines somewhere to play it again.

Finally, I have two last things to say. The first is that in the magazine itself, they're advertising that the next issue will come with another kit, for a papercraft payphone with sound-making keypad. I wonder if they do a kit every month, and if I should try to keep an eye on this magazine in case there's ever another interesting one? The other thing I have to say is that special thanks for this post goes to selectbutton forums user Dylan, for buying the magazine on my behalf and sending it to me.

Other Stuff Monthly #10!

Possibly the furthest these posts have gotten away from videogames and general nerd culture this month, as today's subject is a book about prefabricated housing blocks in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries in eastern Europe. It's not as boring as it sounds, though, as this book is Panelki, and the back half of it is made up of a press-out-and-put-together kit to build your own little replica of one of those very blocks.

The book itself is short, but fairly interesting, with text about the history of these building systems, how they came about, and why, and how "a home for every family" was a high priority in the postwar USSR. These prefab blocks were the way to fulfill that goal, in that time of diminished resources across all of Europe. (Interesting to note that in 2020, "a home for every family" isn't anywhere in sight in capitalist America or Britain. More like "a hundred homes for every landlord"). There's also a lot of big pictures, since this is essentiall a coffee table book, comprised of both photos of the blocks and the people who lived in them, and reproductions of promotional posters and magazine covers from the time.

The kit itself is surprisingly big, and obviously, it's a simple build, since you are essentially very slowly putting a big box together. While building it, though, it's kind of educational with the repetitive routine of putting the square panels demonstrating how a gigantic concrete version of the same would be a quick and cost-effective way of building a lot of housing in a short time, compared to manufacturing millions of bricks and having them be put together into one house at a time. Most of this won't be of any interest to most people, and to be honest, it's not a subject I expect I'll be looking into any further. But sometimes, you have to look into areas of knowledge that go alightly further away from your main interests (even if it's just going down a wikipedia rabbithole), or you'll end up being a boring, ignorant person.

Other Stuff Monthly #9!

So, a few years ago, I was reading my way through the 1980s, as depicted in Uncanny X-Men, and an ad that kept cropping up was one for a board game entitled Web of Gold. It caught my eye, so I went to ebay to see if I could get a copy for myself. Amazingly, depsite the game being decades old, I managed to get a complete copy in immaculate condition for less than five pounds! Even better, it actually turned out to be a pretty good game, which is against the odds for a kids game from the 1980s.

The game concerns a group of explorers venturing into a large cave in search of gold. The cave is unfortunately inhabited by giant spiders. Players each control one explorer and one spider. As explorers, they journey around the board, hoping to find gold nuggets and other items (that aid in finding gold nuggets). As spiders, they try to entrap and kill the other players' explorers in webs. Winning comes through either being the first explorer to fetch six nuggets back to their homebase, or the last explorer still alive. It's a fun game, full of backstabbing, and just enough of a luck element to make snatching victory from the jaws of defeat an exciting event.

Where Web of Gold really shines though, is in its board and components. Everything is meticulously and precisely designed to fit together. The rock pillars on the board have little notches to fit the web tokens between, the explorers have slots on their underside to put them on the webs whn they get caught, and there are little places around the edges of the board to store cards, the die, and so on. Furthermore, each player has a little card to keep track of the fuel in their lantern and the number of spider bites they've suffered. These cards have little sliding counters attached to them and again, they're excellenty designed. Finally, the item cards, depicting things like torches, mushrooms, ropes, and so on, have really great, colourful art printed on them. It's just a great-looking game, with parts that are satisfying to use that add to the overall quality of the game as a whole.

Web of Gold is a great game, and, assuming prices are still as low as they were a few years ago, and also assuming you have at least two other people with whom to play it, I highly recommend tracking down a copy of your own.

Other Stuff Monthly #8!

It's time once again to look at a thing that's not a videogame, and this month, our subject is the November 2005 issue of Terebi Magazine, which is a Japanese magazine aimed at little boys. Why bother covering something like this? Because almost all the content is about tokusatsu tv shows, and a lot of that is spent of awesome double-page spreads, be they photographic or even some cool old-school artwork.

The magazine is also supposed to come with a DVD and a bunch or press-out-and-fold cardboard toys, but unfortunately, my copy has no DVD, and most of the toys were missing too. A coupler of the toys were intact, but my attempt at putting them together was an abject failure resulting in ugly, mangled, torn cardboard. Oh well.

Anyway, even if you can't read Japanese, Terebi Magazine is still worth seeking out some issues of if you're interested in tokusatsu, because of those aforementioned photo spreads. While adult-aimed magazines like Newtype Thelive are great for pictures of attractive actors and actresses from tokusatsu shows (and for covering late night stuff like Garo and Lion Maru G that has no place in a kids magazine, of course), these spreads have lots of big close-ups of monster, mecha, and hero suits, which are a joy to look at in such detail.

Also in this issure were some awesome detail cutaway drawings of Ultraman monsters, and a bunch of puzzles, mainly mazes. That's about it for this month, and I'm sorry if you're not at all interested in tokusatsu, but I never claimed that these monthly posts were ever going to be anything but self-indulgent!

Other Stuff Monthly #7!

This month's thing that isn't a videogame is an old, rare fanzine! Which is about videogames. Specifically, PC Engine games, it being called The Complete PC Engine Guide Book and all. It was printed in 1993, as far as I can tell, on regular white photocopy paper, with slightly thicker yellow paper used for the cover. Naturally, after twenty-six years, such an item feels pretty fragile, and in fact, the ebay seller from whom I bought it sent me a message when I placed my bid, requesting that I promise to take care of it. It's pretty rare, too, it seems to have been only listed on ebay twice ever (though I don't know if both times were the same copy).

There's about 90 pages of actual content in here, along with a few blank "notes" pages, and some ads on the inside back cover. There's a section detailing all the different models of PC Engine, which even includes the LT and the LaserActiive, which is pretty impressive from a pre-WWW fanzine. Then there's a section on peripherals, the highlights being something called a "colour booster", which does... something to do with making the colours better on  a "SCART PC Engine", as opposed to a PAL one. I know there were a small number of PAL PC Engines released by mail-order, but I have no idea what a SCART one might be, or why the colours need boosting, and half a page dedicated to the Magic Super Griffin. This is one of those big, old-fashioned piracy devices, that goes into the HuCard slot of your PC Engine, and connects to a floppy drive via parallel port. It cost £250, and the article claims that "It is quite legal, in the UK, to buy and use these copiers, so long as you do not sell the software", which sounds very dubious to me. There's also a small mention of a forthcoming, unnamed peripheral that will allow users to record up to an hour of broadcast tv to a CD. Was such a thing ever announced for the PC Engine? It sounds like some absurd fantasy.

There's also a short anime section, explaining what anime is, in that very early 90s way, and giving glowing reviews to Akira, Project A-Ko, and Warriors of the Wind, and a not-so-glowing review of the 1986 Fist of the North Star movie. Then we get a little preview of the Arcade Card, before the bulk of the book: the games reviews. There's 48 pages of these, packed in 5 to a page (all hand-written, too!), and some of the opinions on offer are pretty unusual. I have to say I'm glad I don't have to rely on this book as my primary source of info when buying PCE games. For example: the excellent KiKiKaiKai only scores two out of ten, while the very mediocre L-Dis scores seven! Wallaby scores higher than KiKiKaiKai, even though the writer admits he couldn't even figure out how to play it! There are some undeniable universal truths, though, as Rondo of Blood and Final Lap Twin both score much-deserved nines.

What's most interesting about the reviews section, from a historical standpoint, is some of the titles used for certain games. Obviously, internet access would have been very rare back then, and even if you were online, there wouldn't be a lot of English language info on Japanese videogames out there, so, when people couldn't read the Japanese titles of games, they just kind of had to guess. So, there's a game just listed as "Dodge Ball", though there's at least three games that could be on PC Engine. Bonze Adventure is "Hell Explorer", Schubibinman is "Overhauled Man", and best of all, Bravoman is "Mr. Stretcho Man". There's even a few mystery titles, like "Kario World", "Son of Dracular", and "Japan Warrior".

The book ends with a sizable cheats section, which was probably very useful in that pre-internet age, and the aforementioned notes pages and ads. Some previous owner of my copy has written in some Devil Crash passwords on the last of the notes pages, and the ads are for a few early 90s UK games importers, plus a faux-leather HuCard waller for only £3.20! I can't really recommend seeking out and buying a copy of this guide, unless you're really interested in the ephemera of early import videogame fandom in the UK. Naturally, all the information is available much more easily and more more accurately online in 2019, so historical curiosity is all it has to offer.

Other Stuff Monthly #6!

Like me, you've probably been curious about all those Chinese Lego-alike brands on Aliexpress, especially since they all have their own unique and original themes, along with the clones of official Lego sets and minifigs of characters to whom they don't own a license. These themes are pretty wide-ranging, too, with fantasy, sci-fi, historical, military and other sets. Recently, I gave into the curiosity and ordered one to see what's what. Specifically, I got Sluban set 0615, from their "The Assassin Legend" theme.

All the sets in this theme seem to feature a smallish medieval building, two combatant minifigs and one civilian minifig. In this case, it's a dwarven blacksmith and his shop providing the backdrop for a fight between a female ninja and an androgynous knight. The shop itself is really nice: it's got two floors and a roof, and both floors actually have stuff in them. There's a little forge and hammer on the ground floor, while upstairs has what appears to be a kind of medieval bathroom, with a barrel and trough. Outside, there's a table, a rack and a training dummy.

As for the minifigs, they're very different in look and construction to official Lego minifigs, with slightly more articulation on the necks. They do look a little odd, but that's probably just in contrast to a lifetime of seeing the original design. They're well-equipped too, as the set comes with three blisters full of swords, halberds, axes, and a bow. Another win for Sluban!

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this. I'd heard that these sets sometimes have missing parts, but I actually had a few pieces left over when I was done! There was an absent sticker sheet, but to be honest, it's not missed, as I hate applying stickers. It was also shipped without a box, but that was made clear on the seller's page, so it's not like I was deceived or anything there (but it might be a problem if you were intending to buy something like this as a gift).  I'll probably get some more sets at some point in the future, after what a success this one's been.

Other Stuff Monthly #5!

One of the secret reasons I started this series of posts was as an excuse to occasionally buy interesting-looking toys from Japan, and this marks the first time I've bought toys specifically for the blog. The toys in question are a mid-2000s line called Keybots, which I guess never really took off, as there's pretty much no English information on them anywhere, and it doesn't seem to have ever had a TV anime or any videogames. (Though the subject of anime is one I'll get back to later!)

The line is made up of cute monster-like robots, which themselves are composed of an octagonal core with four slots, and various body parts that fit into those slots. The cores also have keyholes in the centre, and come with keys. Insert a key into the hole and turn it, and all the attached parts spring loose. Each core does come with its own colour-coded plastic key, and there's also a shiny key made of metal that fits in any of them.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any boxed examples, so there's no packaging scans this time, but I was able to get one complete keybot, a red-and-yellow dragon-looking guy, as well most of the parts for a blue-and-grey character, that seems to have dragon, elephant and demonic forms. All the slots and parts are compatible with each other, though, and there are even connector parts that allow the building of larger, multi-core creatures.

I'm not really a fan of the general aesthetic of the toys themselves, though I think they're aimed at a younger audience than the usual mecha stuff. There is, however, a lot of satisfaction in how they feel, especially the amount of resistance to turning the keys, and how all the parts pop off when you do. It might be worth having a couple around, just to idly fiddle with and keep your hands busy while you watch tv or whatever. It's also basically a building toy, and like most building toys, I expect you'd get a lot more out of it the more parts you have. I'd totally love a similar line that had designs that looked more like "proper" mecha, or maybe even used designs from actual anime.

And that handily fetches us back to the subject of anime! As I said,  I couldn't find evidence of any TV anime, which was a surprise for a kids toyline. But what I did find, along with a bunch of typical thirty second TV ads, was a five minute long CG animated short from 2006 entitled キーボッツII 希望の紋章. It's not listen on AniDB, MyAnimeList, or the Anime News Network encyclopedia, so I think I might be the first in the west to see it? Also there's "II" in the title, so presumably, there's at least one more of them out there somewhere.

Other Stuff Monthly #4

Other than Judge Dredd, British comics don't seem to have much of a place in mainstream "nerd culture" (or "Funko Pop-culture", as it's sometimes derisively called), not even in the UK itself. There's probably a lot of complicated reasons for this, but speaking from the position of a fan with no real knowledge of the inner workings of the comic industry, I'd lay the blame at the feet of publishers who thought they were just churning out penny dreadfuls for children, ignorant of the wealth of talent in their employ, and at the quality of the work they were printing. Sonic the Comic, probably the most fondly remembered UK comic of my generation's childhood is only so highly-regarded in spite of its publishers wishes, as the creative team had to sneak even the simple concept of serialised narrative under the radar.

There's some effort being made to redress that nowadays though, as comics that have never been reprinted in the decades since their original serialisation are finally being collected and made available. This is most notable with regards to the girls' comics of the 1970s, as the entire genre has pretty much disappeared over the past thirty years or so. It really is a crime, when you see how comics like Ace wo Nerae and Onii-sama E Oniisama are internationally renowned, while their UK equivalents have spent decades locked away unread in dusty archives somewhere. So today's subject is a recently printed volume of two stories originally printed in a magazine called Jinty, which was a sci-fi comics anthology aimed at girls, a concept that, if announced today, would enrage all kinds of foul-smelling fedora-wearers.

The first of the two stories is Land of No Tears is the story of a girl named Cassy, born with one leg shorter than the other, a trait that she uses constantly to garner sympathy and weasel out of stuff. After being anaesthetised to undergo the operation to lengthen her shortened leg, she wakes up in a future world, a tory's paradise where the hospital is reduced to rubble and no-one has sympathy for those less fortunate. In fact, any girl who dares to be imperfect in anyway is a slave to those who are. Of course, this is a comic aimed at young girls, so the secret to winning freedom is swimming and gymnastics, as there's a big sports competition for preteen girls that seems to be universally watched, and if the imperfect "gammas" can snatch victory from the perfect "alphas" in front of the world, then everything will change! Luckily, Cassy did a lot of swimming in the past as part of her physical therapy, and one of the other girls, who had her hair partially burned off as a baby, is a talented gymnast.

I won't spoil any more, but there's various powers conspiring against them and so on, and there's an incredibly cruel fate in store for one of the main characters at the end. In my opinion, this was the better of the two stories in this volume, though the other one isn't bad at all, it just isn't as good.That other story is The Human Zoo, the story of a girl named Shona, who, along with her sister Jenny, and a bunch of other unrelated people, are abducted by  big-headed telepathic aliens. They're taken to a world where humans are treated like any other animals: used as food, slaves, pets, and kept in zoos as entertainment.

Before going further into the plot, I want to mention how the aliens  communicate with each other in hilarious unemotional sci-fi speak, woth parents and children referring to each other as "guardian and progeny", and this meets its apex when the aliens dress Shona as one of their own for a circus show, and one of them thinks "This should part lips greatly!" But anyway, Shona's time on the other planet starts in the eponymous zoo, though it doesn't stay there long, as she serves time as a child's pet, a circus animal, and eventually gets freed into the wilderness, where she meets some human-like aliens living in caves, apparently indigenous to the planet. I don't want to say any more, as there are a lot of genuinely surpsing twists, and some pretty grim moments of horror, too.

One thing I will says is that though this story was written and originally published in the 1970s, some of the messages are incredibly relevant today. One of the aliens justifies their torture of rebellious humans with some throwaway excuse about "property damage", just like the apologists for police violence in 2010s America, and there's another scene where humans are enslaved on a farm with the explanation "Machines break down and need repairing. When our men collapse, they just round up more" given as to why the technologically advanced aliens haven't automated all their labour. As our own world quickly approaches the level of technology at which humans can be liberated from drudgery, expect to find similar excuses between the lines whenever corporate bosses and their right-wing political lapdogs make excuses as to why people are still being worked to death for a pittance.

With all of the above being kept in mind, it only makes the story's somewhat milquetoast ending more frustrating. Again, I dont want to go into specifics too much, but essentially, the day is saved when Shona, Jenny, and the native humans discover that all they needed to do to win their freedom was be nice to their oppressors. I mean, obviously this story was published in a children's comic, and obviously, the path of non-violence is probably the better one to be teaching to kids, but it still feels like a bit of an anti-cathartic wet noodle after all the indignities and violence the telepathic aliens had visited upon the humans. I still recommend the story, though, and of course, the book as a whole. If you''re at all interested in comics at all, you'd be doing yourself a disservice by ignoring it. Even though I said Land of no Tears was the better story, I wrote significantly more about The Human Zoo. Hmm.