MISC. MANGA, *The Mighty Bombshells

Back in the early 90s, Antarctic Press was printing out some actual manga, including Vampire Princess Miyu. Alot of these had limited runs in Japan, some of which were not released through a mainstream publisher, but dojin circles. One of these was The Mighty Bombshells, a 2-issue series that was originally printed in Japan through Bandai’s Cyber-Comics. It was created by Yujin Ishikawa, who also worked on a one-shot Antarctic put out titled Justice which looked at American superheroes through the eyes of Japanese artists. Might Bombshells was Ishikawa’s take on an all-female superhero team in the vein of groups like Femforce, but with a Justice League International approach.

The stereotypical alien queen Sondum hops on down to Earth to try and set up a new empire. Landing in New York, she quickly uses her mind-control powers to hypnotize the male members of the Vanguards superhero group. Ms. Liberty is the only one left(aside from the injured Lady Pulsar), so she puts together a makeshift team of uber-chickas to stop Sondum. She gets Blitzkrieg and Fireball from the Eastern team of “Euroforce”, the Japanese mutant Cherry Blossom, Chinese kung-fu babe Red Dragon, and Dynamite Girl from the Texas Rangers(not the football team)who’s built like a brick shipyard. They head after Sondum’s citadel, and take on some mutated citizens. They then clash with the brainwashed heroes, and with Lady Pulsar’s help at the last minute manage to stop Sondum, and free the other heroes. The girls decide to stay together as “The Might Bombshells”, even though three of them are already on other teams groups.

The story is pretty basic for a standard superhero comic, although its strange that the design of the characters wasn’t done in the expected anime style with long legs and jiggling boobs. Even the heroines costumes aren’t all that revealing, as you’d think there would be alot of short skirts with panty shots. This could’ve been a single-issue story, but some bonuses were thrown in, including some concept art, character bios, and a short quickie about Cherry Blossom’s superhero boyfriend. I’d recommend looking these up if you can find them from cheap some comics dealer.