Rick Lundeen is a guy who has created any number of entertaining one shots, always starting with a neat idea and dishing it out in self-contained doses. While I'd love to see him do something a little more extended, When Realities... Collide is another of his entertaining one-shot stories, taking aim at the cliches of science-fiction (with a particular eye on Star Wars, Star Trek and Battle of the Planets) in a way sure to entertain those with a familiarity with those properties. It's a tricky balancing act, because Lundeen needs readers who have both some appreciation and knowledge of the properties but not enough devotion that they can't enjoy parody of it, but if you fall into that category, you should definitely give the book a try.
The high concept of this one is basically "Klingon meets a member of G-Force." Lundeen isn't treading on any trademarks here, as it's parody, but just to cover his bases, he's also changed the names and a couple of the details, but really, it will be painfully obvious to anyone reading this who the characters are. Lundeen has a keen eye for parody of these characters, and he captures both the bluster of the warrior race and the somewhat fey nature and badly translated Japanese style of Earth's hero as well. It's not hard to see the humor that Gok, the warrior, was expecting to meet a square-jawed tough guy like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers and instead meets someone who has a bizarre sense of honor, strange comedy sidekicks and a costume so skintight it doesn't leave much to the imagination.
Lundeen sets his story at a galactic conference, which allows for several background gags about other alien races. At this point, I think the ground has been covered about lame Stormtrooper armor and Darth Vader's homicidally bad temper, but I still got a chuckle out of the gags and the visual presentation of them is entertaining. "Butter knife went right through!" was particularly fun. And there are a couple laugh-out-loud moments, usually having to do with Gok's hair-trigger temper and quick reflexes, which results in a couple of friendly fire incidents.
Comedy in comics is impossible to do if the artist can't handle it, and it's not an easy task. Fortunately, Lundeen is up to the task, and his work on the grumpy demeanor of Gok and the bright-eyed optimistic demeanor of Space Prince does a lot of the job all by itself. There's a nice balance between detail and costume design and making fun of the often goofy costumes to make the art really work, and I think this is an improvement on Lundeen's artwork, which I last saw on So You Want To Be a Super-Villain?
When Realities... Collide is pretty genial for a parody, and that can sometimes be a tone that doesn't work for this type of the story. However, while the book may not have the sharp teeth of something like Galaxy Quest or the infamous "Get a life!" sketch on Saturday Night Live, Lundeen's perceptive observations and gentle skewering of some well-known properties will probably go over quite well with many fans.
