"Let the Man Eat!"

"Crater on the Moon -- Story of a Space Marine"

First, my credentials for reviewing this mini-comic: I am a huge fan of Dumb.

Southpark kills me like Kenny. I will take out stupid DVD's from the library just to open the end credits to see Bad Robot. I have the first two issues (were there ever more, I hope to God not?) of War Sluts, which may be arguably the worst comic book ever printed, not to say committed (as in crime) to paper.

And I read them.

There is Dumb, and there is Good Dumb. Crater On The Moon, published by Keith Curtis's Cyclops Unlimited, is Very Good Dumb.

Southpark is Good Dumb. War Sluts edges into Good Dumb when its writer allows a tongue-in-cheek hint that he knows how Dumb his stuff is (then again, that guy sells those World War Two catalogs that at one time featured the green concentration camp soap -- pocketed by pilfering GI's --for $6.00 a bar - not exactly value-added product). Hey Mister would like to pass as Dumb, but it's not dumb.

Crater On The Moon is so dumb. It's black-and-white fumetti - photos of the publisher and his friends, with word balloons. It has green-toned monsters on the cover, hybrid creatures with the wings and toothy faces of barely-developed dinosaur-birds, and the breasts and butts of some pretty sexy women (who posed for those? The publisher's girlfriend? Telephotos shots on a nude beach? Should Playboy's lawyers be checking out Fair Use guidelines?).

They're called space harpies. They're mostly in there as an excuse for an all-guy cast to aim big cylindrical weapons at naked booty.

Flip open these slick and well-produced little booklets ("Nice production values") and you'll run into names like Athena, Jason and Idemen. I thought this space opera was just following astronomy's and the space program's liking for Greco/Roman religions, until I ran into the Clashing Rocks.