Tantric Stripfighter Trina Volume 1

Trina Devi is the last of her tribe, a group of peaceful warriors who use"the meditations and mantras of the yogis, the martial arts prowess of the Shaolin monks and the unsurpassable state of sexual union of the first real tantric adepts." After merecenaries kill her friends and family, Trina becomes a bounty hunter seeking revenge.

Tantric Strip Fighter Trina is just one big mess of a story, that has no reason for existing, other than serving up the kind of pointless plots, cliché-ridden dialogue, and senseless, soft porn fanservice that made me run screaming from mainstream American comics a long, long time ago.

Tantric Stripfighter Trina is like comic book castor oil -- it's hard to swallow and leaves a sour aftertaste -- except castor oil is supposed to be good for you. There's almost nothing redeeming about this book. In fact, it was almost painful to try to slog through this story about a bounty hunter seeking revenge for the massacre of her people. Or at least I think that was the plot. I'd read a chapter and just could. Not. Get. Past. The flying, flopping boobage and impertinent nipples poking out of every page.

And every female in this semi-Mad Maxesque world has triple-H boobs -- melon-sized, hunch-back inducing bahzongas. Apparently one of the mysterious fighting arts of a "Tantrika" is the ability to throw a few punches and keep their breasts from flying out of their barely-there outfits.

Not that it would bother Trina if they did. Her killer move as a Tantric Stripfighter? She takes off her top to unveil her star-shaped pasties to perplex enemies into "underestimating" her. The female henchwomen of the bad guy? They all wear black bikinis. Yeah, nothing says I'm ready to kick butt for my evil boss, take a few punches and survive a few gunshots like a skimpy black bikini.

"Men have a tendency to underestimate me because of the way I look," says Trina. "They are far too busy trying to figure out a way to bed me than worrying if I pose any kind of threat," she says coyly while squeezing her breasts together for emphasis. Aaagh! Whatever!

This is not the first or the worst comic like this I've ever seen, so why I am so infuriated by it? Because it's time, money and effort thrown at pure junk that could have been spent on promoting the really great books that TokyoPop does have. I shouldn't care -- but for every lame book like this that gets put out, Suppli and Aria get pushed to the back of the stack, and that is a crying shame.