It may be a Money Shot comic but it’s becoming Cherry’s world.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tim Seeley
Art: Gisele Lagace
Colors: Carlos Badilla Z
Letterer: Crank!
What They Say:
The XXX-plorers must make their way through a strange new world where their pasts will come back to haunt them! What is the evil billionaire’s plan, and what does it have to do with Councilor Sinch, Dr. Gnon, and adult comix starlet Cherry?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With fifteen issues behind the original run, Tim Seeley and Sara Beattie had a blast with the book and I thoroughly enjoyed a sex-positive fun romp with the characters. The lack of these kinds of books in the market continues to frustrate me in a different way so Money Shot was a welcome return to something we barely see anymore. With this new series, the opening installment changed it up a bit as it’s just Tim Seeley writing it and previous artist Caroline Leigh Layne isn’t involved with it. Seeley delivers more of what we got from the original work so it’s a fairly seamless transition there while Gisele Lagace took the art duties. Lagace works well from what the prior run had while bringing her own style to it and in some ways it reminds me of the old Playboy and Hustler types of comics we used to get back in the day, especially with the addition of Cherry at the end here.
The series continues to be a little unfocused and all over the place for my tastes at times because I mostly just want it to take some time to breathe and not be full of trouble and antics. But that’s just not in the cards for this cast of characters as we see them now trying to figure out how to stop Brooks as they’ve landed in his place and their previous problem has been dealt with. Amusingly, just as Chris is putting together something resembling the outline of a plan, Brooks has initiated his plan which is to basically place each of them in their own world with their biggest desire when it comes to a partner. For Chris, this takes her back six years to be with Omar while for Annie it has her and her guy together with nobody else in the world, since she’s got this fear of losing him. He’s just enjoying normal non-performative sex, which is admittedly something he’s been on about for a lot of this run, and for good reason.
What we get as an observer is Bree as she tries to figure out how it’s turned to this before getting caught up with Cherry herself. It’s a little loose and simple but it works, and is fun to watch as these two very different designs connect in Brooks’ otherworldish kind of place where he’s testing things. Things that go off the rails pretty quickly because Cherry is the one with real power here and when she believes that she’s been lied to as others start showing up in the facility, she essentially turns it into her world. Which isn’t great for Brooks but he has that cavalier billionaire approach of trying to manage the chaos and pretending its all part of the plan. The problem is that with all the twists and turns and the lack of clarity from earlier on, I’m hard pressed to be sure of what the intention is here.
In Summary:
Once again, it’s more about just enjoying the small moments rather than the story which is frustrating since the original series did it so well in managing that. The adult material here is pretty fun and you really do just want a story with Annie and her guy since they’re so fun and it would be interesting to see an Omar and Chris story where she isn’t just so panicked or in trouble and just breathes a little. The science fiction elements are light touches here overall and it’s more about leaning into the problematic billionaire thing on a galactic scale. Which isn’t all that interesting still because of the chaos the ones in the real world continue to create, making the escapism here a bit less escapist.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Vault Comics<
Release Date: September 20th, 2023
MSRP: $4.99
