Bigger Than Capes

Written by Tim Seeley & Sarah Beattie
Art by Rebekah Isaacs
Colours by Kurt Michael Russell
Letters by Crank!

Now it’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Money Shot, hell if you search my name and ‘money shot’ you’ll find…well, best not to get into that. But because I’ve talked about the first volume quite a lot I was pretty apprehensive about being the person to review Volume 2, what’s left to say?

Well after the XXX-plorers brought the scientists of Earth to the stars in the first five issues the book does exactly what it had to. Raises the stakes, introduces a, thankfully fictitious, yet unfortunately somewhat believable version of the President of the United States of America and you’ve guessed it, adds him to the roster of spacefaring pornstars.

While the Covalence do their best to stop the XXX-plorers before they do too much damage to the larger universe, we follow our heroes as they travel to the distant planet of Cockaigne (heh cock), one of the few planets not a part of the Covalence. A planet where concepts are traded as a form of currency, and they’re hoping to pick up a positron battery or two that will allow them to power Money Shot and leave their porn star lives behind. Thankfully however, the population of Cockaigne happen to all be totally hot so the porn thing looks to be going pretty well for the time being.

I can’t lie, obviously Money Shot is still a ridiculous premise, I feel like that much is a given at this point, but this volume does a great job of continuing the balance of comedy, sci-fi action and relatable human moments. Honestly, I think the latter may be the greatest strength of the series, Seeley and Beattie manage to do an impressive amount of character work in a book that’s already doing everything all the time. While the main focus of character development is still Chris, a few panels of dialogue tells us plenty about each of the other characters, yeah, even President Luke Kirk.

That may already seem like a lot to be fitting into a series, this volume also pushes it’s political message to the forefront, particularly focusing in on the way supporters of certain politicians are able to rewrite their opinions on the fly in keeping with the actions of whoever they’re supporting.

Rebekah Isaacs and Kurt Michael Russell remain one of my favourite artist and colourist teams in comics and I’d love to see more from them going forward. Isaacs attention to detail and endless variety in expressions and character design remains one of Money Shot‘s greatest strengths, which is saying something because Money Shot is all strengths all the time.

This volume feels like an ending in some ways, and closes at a point where if there was no more Money Shot it wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. However, it would come as a tremendous disappointment if that were the case, and that’s exactly how I felt when I was reading this in singles. I’m very glad we’re getting more from the XXX-plorers, I feel like there’s still plenty of potential to move the series forward, and I’m going to be eagerly waiting for every single issue.

Take a look around, we’re in a golden age of comics and Money Shot is proof of that, this series should be Vault’s Saga, everyone should be reading this and using it as a gateway into independent comics, this should be opening the door for new readers. So when you’re scrolling through a hundred pages of ComiXology trying to figure out what to read next, or staring at the shelves in your local comic book shop unsure of what it is you want to check out, take my advise and get weird, get adventurous, get Money Shot.