Stiletto 8

Everything and the kitchen sink by John B. Lai
Published by Ultimate Comics Group

While our vivacious heroine Stiletto and her pet puppy monster Rigby are hitching a ride back to Earth with the Pak-Wan rebels (following the big victory last month), their ship is attacked hard by a warbird from the Godra empire. That was last issue. This iss we see the girl and her dog taken prisoner aboard the Godra ship and forced into a battle arena against seemingly dozens of the brutish warriors. Freeing a new friend, the trio fight and fight and fight. And make a few sexual innuendos along the way. Do they survive? Does anyone, really?

Lai wraps up his second big story arc of everybody's favorite intergalactic stripper. This plot unfolds deftly amidst the violence. And yes, there is nonstop violence in this book, with gnarly fight sequencing and alien spaceships being blasted back to Creation. But despite the hoopla, we do meet a major new character in Stiletto's crazy sci-fi world, the Kadra fighter Ren. So readers may well at long long last be seeing Stiletto encountering someone who may well be her equal enough so as to do something more than mere sexual innuendoing. Not that sexual innuendoing is not fun, but then neither is the third. or fourth dimension, honestly. The IMPORTANT thing to be remembered and so acknowledged, of course, is that this issue does still, despite such copious quantities of character development, have nipples, nipples, and nipples.

The art continues to shine and evolve. The pages are as pretty to look at, the storytelling becomes even more clearer, and Rigby is still adorable while she licks alien blood off the floor. As expected, a plenitude of nifty alien designs on show, from the creatures to their tech and environs. Imagination is a wonderful thing, and Stiletto is loaded up the arse with it in spades.

And yes, the second Stiletto storyline from the nilskidoo-approved ongoing series does indeed wrap here, but it is my understanding that likeminded Stiletto fanatics should expect a trade collection of issues 5-8 coming soon...and with this snazzy cover:

So make like a stone and paint it, black!