In "Reason to be Excited," I spotlight things from modern comics that I think are worth getting excited about. I mean stuff more specific than "this comic is good," ya know? More like a specific bit from a writer or artist that impressed me.

I promised a month's worth of Reasons to Be Excited, and, well, you'll still be getting a month's worth, just a bit stacked together!

Today, I spotlight the brilliant work that Rebekah Isaacs (who did an amazing job on Buffy for Dark Horse back a while back) is doing with her colorist, Kurt Michael Russell, on Money Shot, a comic book whose premise is so out there that it was quite the challenge for Isaacs and Russell to pull it off JUST right and they did do beautifully.

The series (written by Tim Seeley and Sarah Beattie, with lettering by Crank!) is set in a future where an alien civilization made contact with Earth and initially offered to allow Earth to join them the rest of the civilized universe, but were then so grossed out by our behavior on Earth that they withdrew the offer. Five years later, a scientist has figured out a way for us to travel through galaxies to make contact with these aliens on our own, but the problem is that in an anti-intellectual society, no one is willing to PAY for it.

The scientist who came up with the method of travel (which cost all of the money that her university had to fund it, which makes her fellow scientists hate her because there is no money left for THEIR research) then hits upon a solution to how she can pay for the actual exploration. You see, in the future, pornography has become so depraved with the use of computer effects to allow you to place pretty much anyone's face on anyone's body (so if you want to watch your mailman have sex with your grandmother, there ya go) that there are few things that people are actually titillated by anymore. Monster pornography has become one of the more popular forms of pornography out there, which gives Dr. Christine Ocampo the brainstorm of traveling to new world, having sex with the aliens that they find there and then stream it on the internet, with the resulting financial support from the pornography-loving public to pay for future missions.

Her fellow scientists just happens to have specialties that help in this endeavor, through the creation of a universal translator and a scientist who can make sure the aliens don't give the scientists any crazy diseases.

It's a very clever concept by Seeley, but it's also one of those things where you could easily tip over into exploitative. Seeley obviously didn't want that and Isaacs threads the needle amazingly well.

It's important to note that the comic book doesn't shy away from sex. It is a very sexual comic book, as it would HAVE to be for the comic to work, but it's done in a sex-positive fashion that never touches into exploitation. As I say in the headline, it's the most adorable adults only alien encounter you'll come across.

One of the scientists practices her universal translator on Christine's cat, and so there's an excellent scene where Christine is having some alone time while her cat is disgusted at her "self-mating"...

It's there when she discovers her idea...

Here she is selling the idea to her fellow scientists. So much of the series is based on the facial expressions of the characters and Isaacs is brilliant at that...

Here, we see the cliffhanger of the first issue, as the XXXplorers are captured after one of their tapings...

The second issue of the series shows what happens when an alien race's idea of sex is a lot more...violent than ours...

Russell really gives such a vibrant pallette for these world visits. He contrasts it really well with the scenes back on Earth, which have a more restrained color scheme.

In any event, Money Shot has been a really fun series so far and Isaac and Russell's artwork has been a joy to see.

Okay, this feature is a bit less of a reader-interactive one, as I'm just spotlight stuff in modern comics that specifically impressed ME, but heck, if you'd like to send in some suggestions anyways, maybe you and I have the same taste! It's certainly not improbably that something you found cool would be something that I found cool, too, so feel free to send ideas to me at brianc@cbr.com!