Tranceptor: Book Two: Iron Gauge, Part One Patrick Conlon and Michael Manning (Amerotica)
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There’s nothing sedate about Patrick Conlon and Michael Manning’s Tranceptor comic book series, the second, long-delayed volume of which was finally released last month, a full nine years after the first. Despite the hiatus, Tranceptor: Book Two: Iron Gauge, Part One picks up right where the original left off, following the adventures of the titular (in various ways) Tranceptors, a kind of priesthood of dominatrices who ride through a postapocalyptic landscape in chariots pulled by buxom leather-clad horse-girls and/or well-hung leather-clad horse-boys. Our heroine, called simply the Tranceptor, has inventively intimate encounters with her horse-girls (involving chains, water, lather, and various attachments), with another Tranceptor named Ravanna, and with Hyu, a cute subgroom at a way station who looks decidedly underage. Most spectacularly, the Tranceptor is raped by Ravanna’s pal, a disgusting mutant lizard called Sslthsss. (She sustains no apparent physical or psychological damage—the Tranceptors are a tough bunch.)
This is all good, trashy, stylish fun: Conlon is a tattoo artist, and he and Manning have that testosterone swagger down cold. The first volume, Tranceptor: The Way Station, opens with a tour de force of faux noir: stark white light and sensual black shadows wash over piles of fetish gear and a voluptuously writhing sleeping female form complete with obligatory ass shots and nipple eruptions. The cynically exploitive surface flash is certainly part of the charm—but it isn’t the only thing going on either.
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