By Zack Quaintance — I read this comic with my tablet on a plane while leaning out into the aisle, and, oh boy, was that a mistake. There are, to be sure, panels and scenes in this book that will make you bashful if you read them in a public setting...although maybe not as many as one might assume going into it. Despite the name and branding and concept, Money Shot #1 is not really all that salacious of a story. Sex (obviously) does play a part in this story, but the main ideas/themes here are more about desperation and greed than they are about anything gratuitous.

It feels odd to type this, but the comic that has a character with a condom behind his ear on the cover is primarily a really smart commentary about the relationship between knowledge and greed, about how profit and innovation don’t inherently coexist. Not to brag here, but I kind of saw this coming. Writers Tim Seeley & Sarah Beattie as well as publisher Vault Comics are smart and clever, interested in asking timely questions about the current state of life in our world, be it through vampire comics like Seeley’s Dark Red (that one’s from AfterShock) or space opera’s like Vault’s incredible ongoing, Wasted Space. In other words, this comic was never going to be Sex Criminals...but in space! (Also, I absolutely love Sex Criminals and don’t think its gratuitous either...it just works here as an example of a comic that is way more focused on the sex.) 

That said, sex is integral to our story in a smart way that really works. A fact of our recent times is that the sex industry has driven widespread acceptance of new technology, as well as private sector innovation. See the Internet, streaming sites, bandwidth speeds, video chat capabilities. The list goes on. In Money Shot #1, the pair of ideas I mention above — greedy societal valutes limiting knowledge and sex driving technology — are both extrapolated to extremes to make the satire work. The society is far more anti-science than our own is (at least currently...who knows the way some segments of the country are headed, but I digress), and the sex elements are also absurdist.

This is also a comic that really gives its artists stellar visual material to work with, and the team of Rebekah Isaacs and colorist Kurt Michael Russell absolutely nail each and every visual gag. The visuals storytelling (as always) is the heart of this thing, and they nail it (not a pun!) from the first page, the one that made me wonder who was looking over my shoulder when I was reading it on my plane.

Basically, this is a comic about scientist boning aliens to be sure, but it’s also a comic about scientists boning aliens for a worth and very important cause — knowledge, innovation, advancement of human kind’s capabilities. It’s a prime example of good sci-fi and satirical storytelling really, leading the audience with a trail of gold coins — jokes like one scientist wanting to be called Supermassive Blackhole when his name is already Doug Koch made me laugh aloud — through a path of complex and nigh-answerless questions we all should talk more about. 

Let’s face it...a lot of sex has been had for worse reasons than all of that.

Overall: A smart comic about the relationship between greed and knowledge/innovation. Come (no pun intended) for the sex jokes, stay for the important questions about modern values. 9.4/10

Money Shot #1
Writer: Tim Seeley & Sarah Beattie
Artist: Rebekah Isaacs
Colorists: Kurt Michael Russell
Letterer: Crank!
Designer: Tim Daniel
Price: $3.99

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.