Back at the tail end of June in 09, Bandito released the first part of a novel series called Bounce Chix Origins. Now, I'd really enjoyed his art and his work prior to this, but this was an entirely new foray for him, and since I identified his art as his strength, I was a little saddened not to see a full length comic or something akin to that, but rather, a story with pin up art peppered throughout it. It was something of a crossover, Bounce Chix and Tickling in Space, and I was a little bit perplexed on how that would work. This wasn't the Bandito work I was used to.
That miffed me.
Sure, the art within it was a marked improvement. And the story actually was really well crafted. But I was still, I suppose, wishing it would be something different. A comic. Something else. I don't know. I kind of had a wild hair up my butt about things.
Then, Bandito introduced Blake.
From that point on, I never had doubts or notions about anything with his name on the release.
Blake acted as the antagonist in that novel series, and she was a stark contrast to the norms he'd seemingly worked in. She was cruel. She was brutal. She was a villain, but unlike so many in tickling stories, she carried a different weight, a different level of savagery. Blake was the closest thing to the Joker this series could offer. By the time the novel was ending, Blake's impact had debilitated me. She fit a certain aesthetic that was knee weakening, dark hair, pale skin, impossibly delicious body but with a gothic and dark appearance, and an attitude that exuded control. It was here that Blake first captured Dusty, and, using scream sand, permanently marked the soon to be captain of the Danneskold. Scream sand is a sort of nerve stimulator, something that makes one insanely sensitive, and Blake managed to use it across Dusty's breasts, nipples, her soles, as well as other places. Not only that, but with her electro glove, with her impossible bondage, with a chastity coin that left her at the peak of cresting in orgasm but never allowing her the blessed relief of cumming, with her calculating manner, she broke Dusty. Thoroughly. Utterly. In written tickle stories, Blake's breaking of Dusty is one of the most cruel, most sinister, and ultimately, hottest things I've ever read in the entire time I've been around tickling material. Blake cemented Tickling in Space's place, in my opinion, as completely top flight. The story has been a frequent revisit, as is the subsequent next part, where the tables turn, where Blake isn't just broken and destroyed, but is done so in a way as to showcase the actual ying and yang between the two characters. Seriously, there is a significant amount of character depth and extraordinarily hot action that happens in the scenes between the two characters in those novels.
I go off on this tangent because ever since then, Blake's been a character at the very forefront of my mind. She is perfect tickler, but she's also a lee that brings out the most brutal, most savage, most dark of my own longings. Many times, I feel some empathy towards targets, towards fantasies. But never Blake. She is something wholly and utterly beyond. I figured she'd return. Hell, with where things ended up, it wouldn't make sense for her not to. Blake is so certain to Dusty's character that she creates the captain we know today. And given Blake's punishment, and the hell she was set in and subject to, I knew her reappearance would be an extremely wicked thing. Even still, Blake's Revenge blew my socks off in not only its depth but in how it attacked the story and created this extraordinary series that feels like quintessential tickling story telling and art.
This release, Tickling In Space 15: Blake's Damnation, Part 1, has a very unenviable task; it's following perhaps the best tickle fiction release in the history of MTJ, in the history of the medium. Not only that, but the prior release is the pay off of a story that had been set in motion and built up to and through since September of 2014. This one is coming nine months after the release of the previous one. Was the time going to make the impact of the turnabout soften? How the hell can Blake's Damnation follow what we saw in the previous release?
Thankfully, this release is of extremely high quality, and sets into motion the pieces for perhaps an even more explosive finale. The very thought of that just made my brain melt.
I don't think it's adequate, or fair, to compare this release to the previous one and expect that same explicitness, the same outright intensity. Again, that came as a result of a lot of build, and everything there was paying off stories and issues to that climactic point. In many ways? I think the best way to approach this one, even though it is in the same line, is to the first Blake's Revenge release. On those merits, this release hits that mark, and given the team's strengths and comfort with the characters and materials, might exceed it. Actually, I think the art is so strong here and the action is so well done that it hits hard.
Starting out with a brief story summary, Dusty and her crew have been broken apart, with half of the crew being jettisoned to a deserted planet to die, while Blake and a group of assassins isolate specific crew members with the explicit goal to tickle them to death. The reason this is viable? Dusty's crew has been subject to Krandaloozian phermones, the universe's most powerful aphrodisiac which has the ability to create orgasms so powerful they cause the heart to explode, as a result of Shooter's presence on the Danneskold. Shooter is there to lead the crew to the legendary ghost ship, the Atocha Marie. Blake and her Assassins? They're charged with getting the Marie, and eliminating Dusty and her crew. Now, not every crew member has been eliminated as planned. For example, Vida never tickled Audrey to death, in part because she has an extreme crush on the girl and wanted to keep her as her tickle toy. The other? Booki, who was taken by the Spadran bounty hunter, True Sana, to be given to someone as their perfect tickle slave. Now, the story there is extremely important, as Booki's plight has been brought up multiple times since she was taken; she is to be tickled constantly, left at the very crest of ticklish orgasm, until she is delivered to the one who wants her, someone named Vassa, who, by all indicators, sounds like an absolutely craven tickle beast with unparalleled skill. Boo has been sought out by this woman for years. The rest of the crew? It seems their little hearts had already popped, with Blake torturing Dusty's mind with the stories of their demise, all while physically tickling and destroying her body beyond anything she's ever experienced.
Just as Blake is about to have her final revenge, in tickling Dusty to death, a flash of light; the jettisoned crew, led by Koki, Silki, Shooter, and Downey, materializes, pointing a laser musket at the back of the Ashen Ghost's head. On the planet below the Atocha Marie was some kind of box, with hieroglyphics telling a story about its usage. Silki surmises its use as a time traveling device, and all they need is the key. Now, of course, this makes for a simple Deus Ex sorta thing...except the actual device and its background is a lot more complex. The people in the hieroglyphics look like Dusty, and were a race of powerful rulers, but the gift of time travel ended up destroying them, practically scrubbing them from existence. There are consequences for using time travel. Even still, the day seems to be saved.
Well...not quite.
Along with those consequences are two very important aspects that this story brings up going forward; one, there was only potential route in time that allowed for Dusty and the crew's rescue, and two, Booki wasn't exactly one of the rescued. Why that is, well, I imagine it plays a role to be talked about. Even still, there's intrigue there and in how Bandito lays out the story here.
That leaves us where we are now, with Dusty in control, and Blake now in her clutches. Given everything that she's been made to suffer, I imagine this is something Dusty, along with the audience, is going to savor mightly. And as sensitive as Dusty is, Blake's a Twitch, with a body that's been saturated in scream sand from the incident years before. Twitches literally are made to be perfect tickle objects, given how they perceive sensations, given how pleasure and the like creates a sort of feedback loop within them that magnifies the intensity of the sensation beyond comprehension.
What this means is that Blake might be the most ticklish thing in the entire universe.
What it also means is that, given what kind of character she is, exploiting this weakness to the fullest levels of depravity is something nobody could ever feel sorry for. Then again, Blake's a creature created out of hate, and in the past, affection creates the absolute worst kind of prison, where her body betrays her. I don't use the term lightly, but Blake's body might be the utter embodiment of the concept of tickle slut.
Starting with the cover, perhaps one of the strongest elements out there, is epic. It conveys the body of what we're going to see. Blake's helpless, watching in dread. Dusty is standing there, gun in hand, utterly satisfied in what she's seeing. We have Glitch, the Thompson Lovebot assassin and slave that Blake hacked to get herself out of prison, ending up wrecking and destroying the poor thing, and on top of her is Jessie, tickling and dominating the lovebot, but herself having to deal with the ever frisky Thompson and her swirling and sudsy brushes. There's a lot going on here, and it's colorful, and the looks of the characters really pop.
The comic is based around the beginning of Blake's demise, as well as the 'fixing' of Glitch, who gets tickled better. Well, she's a love bot, so of course, overdoing bad hardware, it makes sense!
What I really feel is well done in this release is the faces, the looks, the emotions expressed. This is something that is very integral in tickling art, I feel, and is something that is hard to properly express to people who might not understand or might not get it. From the very first page, to the very first panels, Dusty's expressions run through a myriad, given the content in the panels. Each one has a freshness and a freneticness to it. Blake's disdain and hatred is palpable. It's a the bottom of the first page, with Dusty about to use her fingers on Blake, that I really took notice; the look in Blake's face and eyes is amazing. This face has been part of the image advertisements for this comic, and it's absolutely incredible. The look of horror and dread she has, as well as this underscored helplessness to what is about to befall her? It's actually one of my favorite nontickling art panels in a tickling comic ever, in part because it perfectly encapsulates so much about the anticipation and the dread that comes with tickling a subject. The fact that her eyes grow as wide as they do definitely doesn't hurt.
It's been nine months, but the crispness of the art here is great. I know I say this time and again with these releases, but it feels like each release, Ponce gets better and better with these characters, even though I don't know how he can. This is top shelf, top level art all in all.
Duarte's colors palette and use is as vibrant as ever. Actually, there is deserved credit here with the expressions as well, as the color schemes used crystallize dread and different emotions so well. Not only that, but the colors really show off the sweat effects and create incredible peaks. The impossible stiffness of Blake's nipples jutting from her perfect breasts might've been well drawn by Ponce, but it's Duarte's colors that draw your eyes right there and make them go wide.
Rostokfx's lettering probably doesn't get as much credit as it deserves in the different releases, but there is a lot of variety here and a lot of different spikes of intent and different dialogue and narrative that pop because of the work here. This is a subliminal thing you might not notice when it's done well, a further testament to the work, but I figured I'd say something about it here because it is of professional quality.
Overall? This is another incredible release. Don't go in expecting it to be the tidal wave that the last one was, though to be honest, the action here is extremely frenetic and hot. The pieces are getting put into place, the build is happening yet again, and overall, that's an awful, awful thing for poor Blake to suffer from...but a good one for all of us to get to savor and enjoy.
Wickedly hot, another great story from Bandito, and amazing art and colors. Seriously a great release. It only makes me impatient for the next one to come out, because if this is where we are starting, my good god, the potential for where we are going!
