The Planet Jimbot anthology reaches its final issue with the bizarre situation that the two of the stories in this five part anthology are six episodes long! Both Kroom (Jim Alexander & Glen Fleming) and The Last Posse (Jim Alexander & Paulina Vassileva) have two episodes in this issue.
The only strip in this issue that is not part of the ongoing serials is Facts of Life by Jim Alexander and Jon Haward. A touching tale of life, love and fish. Jon has turned in a superb set of Black & White pages for this and his quality as an artist shines through.
As usual I’m not about to give spoilers for the stories here, but I want to give a little room to praise the series overall. We here at FQP are used to putting out anthologies, in fact that is pretty much our core, but we don’t do serials. The sheer length of time it takes to get new issues ready can be a massive negative for serials. 2000 AD is out every week- so they can maintain a blistering pace but FutureQuake is only out 3 times a year at best. Reader inertia is a huge obstacle.
Jim and the rest of the planet Jimbot team have juggled the number of ongoing stories well in my opinion. Each issue of the series has had at least one self contained strip as well as the serials and that helps greatly with new readers who will then hopefully be intrigued enough to go back and fill the gaps in the stories.
And this is really my only negative- Jim & co should have given the series a sixth issue. To be fair, they probably didn’t know they needed one when they started the book, but I think that they have missed out here by squeezing the last chapters of Kroom and The Last Posse into this issue. Of course, if Jim and the team had known they may have used the option to run the extra chapters earlier in the series as well, giving more room in this issue for a self contained work.
Do I think the series works as a whole? You bet. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the whole run and would recommend it to anyone.
Planet Jimbot now have a shop via the ETSY platform- and the full run of Amazing & Fantastic Tales is available as a single item. Highly recommended.
Review of Issue 04
Review of issue 03
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