It’s time to go back to the world of Symbion, where a bunch of scientists accidentally unleash a plague that devastates the world. Totally not relatable, I know. I wonder how their congressional hearings went?
In Symbion’s case, the plague turned humans into bug people and bugs into giants that telepathically bond to human partners. Thus the Sectaurs come to be, fighting over the last vestiges of science because that went so well for them in the past. The heroes of the Shining Realm versus the villains of the Dark Domain, represented with action figures, figurines with action features, and ridable puppets in the original 80s toyline from Coleco.
This minicomic focuses on Skito and Toxcid. Skito is a mercenary in service to the Dark Domain and Toxcid is one of the action figurines. His name is on the comic, but since he’s the bad guy our heroes are the young warrior Zak and his action figurine Bitor. There’s also Princess Belana, who from what I can tell is a media-only character because boys don’t want girls in their toyline or something. From the dialog I can’t tell if she and Zak are an item or not. He keeps calling her “beautiful”, she keeps calling him brave and going about his bravery, but given the speech patterns that could be the usual royal complimenting stuff. Boys don’t want to see guys kiss girls, either, after all.
No credits on these minicomics, which is still a shame. So let’s jump right into the story. You can try to read along with me at Sectaurs.com, a Sectaurs fansite, but the scans are not very good. I could at least figure out what was going on, and by opening the pictures in a new tab I could mostly read what they’re saying.
We open on Skito and his underlings as they prepare to ambush Belania’s caravan, bringing a new “secret weapon”. After telling his goons to shut up in case they can be heard and scare off the target, we get Belania and Zak possibly flirting. Belania is worried about bringing their secret weapon through the swamps, and Zak reminds her that her mother the duchess told her it was a bad idea. So this is Belania’s fault, convinced they had to get it to Prince Dargon fast. Besides, Zak could totally protect it so she isn’t worried, and yet she’s also worried. It’s kind of on you, girl.
Zak sends Bitor to scout, and he immediately gets caught in a giant bug sized bear trap. Skito’s goons swarm the caravan but Zak is able to take them down easy. So Skito sends Toxcid in to use his toxic attack to take him down. No sense getting his hands dirty when he can make his bond bug do all the work. With Zak down and Bitor still trying to get out of the trap, Skito takes Belania and the secret weapon back to his headquarters.
Apparently it’s not a very secret headquarters. General Spidrax shows up because he hired Skito and isn’t happy that the mercenary would both try to secure the weapon for his own base but take the duchess’s daughter as his prisoner. Spidrax is sure the Empress would love to have the opposition in her dungeon. Zak and Bitor, having awoken and escaped respectively, also find the place, and engages everyone in battle, using the secret weapon, a “net catapult” that springs like a fly swatter (appropriate), on Spidrax and knocking Skito into the same kind of much he was left in. Low tech weapon but that’s what happens when science ruins the world. With the villains routed, our heroes take the secret weapon to the Shining Realm and Dargon.
So not much to summarize, but for the page count and panel size there’s a decent short story here. Characters are easily identified, look cool enough to encourage toy sales as we see what the toys this didn’t come with, since being a Skito comic I’m assuming it came with his and Toxcid’s two-pack, and had a good story to action balance for what they had to work with. So it does the job it needs to, use an entertaining story to make the kid’s new toy look cool and show him more toys to get. Not much else to say, really.
Next time depends on what I can find. Either we finally get to another Spider-Man comic from Peter Pan peanut butter or we keep the space train going and check in on the Starriors.
BW Media Spotlight 