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About Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms #1
Writer: W.S. Quinton
Artist: Damien Torres
Coloring: Dakota Urmahn
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
Publisher: Antarctic Press
Publication Date: November 27th, 2024
Logline:
Tibbi is a fan of psychedelic mushrooms who puts her advanced degrees in botany and chemistry to good use by creating her own new strain of funny fungus. Enjoy her first time-traveling romp of a trip in this fantastic first issue. Time travel, dinosaurs and bubble baths await.
Where can I read Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms #1?
Pick this up from your Local Comic Shop or via Amazon’s Kindle Store.
Trigger Warnings
Dinosaurs
Drug References including Magic Mushrooms and Marijuana
Nudity
The Fear of Being Eaten Alive
Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms #1 Review:
Admittedly I haven’t spent too much time in the worlds of Antarctic Press. Despite this, I am familiar with the storied history of AP’s venture into bizarrre erotica. A bizarreness known for melding cuteness with the sexually explicit.
Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms, while open to playing around with the sexualisation of the female form, doesn’t descend into overt perversion. Instead, here’s a story of gardening wannabe influencer Tibbi who, during a day off tends to her pot plants and partakes in some magic mushrooms she’s been meaning to try.
After running a hots bath, she eats a sliver of a mushroom and soon enough she’s starts to trip. As reality melts away her bath turns into a vast ocean she’s descending into before she’s finally spat out on the other side in a spectacular Alice in Wonderland fashion.
Naked and surveying her surroundings, Tibbi realises she’s been transported into a fantastical land filled with giant mushrooms and long extinct prehistoric beasts. Unfortunately for her, her naked form catches the attention of a nearby feathery dinosaur who is in hot pursuit.
Jumping back into the lake she was spat out of in the first place, she goes through a whirlwind before erupting back in her bath, with the dinosaur trying to get through on the other side. Terrified and still tripping balls, Tibbi does all she can, stamping on the dinosaurs head as it tries to get through on the other side. Kicking and punching, the dinosaurs head becomes dislodged from its body and ends up in Tibbi’s bathroom. Ending with the climax of Tibbi (understandably) freaking the fuck out.
Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms is a fun, easy-to-read jaunt into a mushroom tripped fantasy. While Tibbi spends the majority of her time being naked throughout the issue, it’s refreshing to see artist Damien Torres play with the female form with a character whose curves are highlighted, and not bastardised in the usual Marvel Comics 90s-2010s style of outright porn fetishisation. Despite this, the placement of soap suds would be fun to some and ridiculous to others.
Dakota Urhahn’s coloring is equally important as it communicates a world blurred by the lines of what is reality vs magic mushroom trip. The highlights are the two pages depicting Tibbi’s descension from bathtub to swirling ocean to prehistoric world. A world that feels as much as Ka-Zar’s Savage Land as Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland.
Though dialogue-light, W.S. Quinton’s writing depicts a fun bewildering adventure turned horror with Tibbi acting as both the audience surrogate and damsel in distress. A level of distress communicated eloquently by letterer Taylor Esposito as moments of excitement, fun, psychedelics and terror are traversed as easily as Tibbi travels to the other dinosaur-populated world.
A decent comic book issue given its saving grace in the art and coloring but I would argue the writing struggles to pull its own weight as there isn’t anything spectacularly brilliant happening here. The writer needs to separate from the inspiration of damsel in distress thrown into otherworldly experience in order to keep us engaged beyond the second issue. How is Tibbi going to overcome the horrors that befall her? What does the portal between realities mean? Hopefully there’s a radical shift.
Key Takeaways of Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms #1:
While Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms is rightfully its own story. There seems to be a clear homage to Lewis Carroll’s 1865 children’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” A fantasy story littered with drug references.
Writer W.S. Quinton explores modern tropes of content creation with Tibbi being a gardening influencer and the pitfalls of endless content creation being hazardous to one’s own mental health.
Nudity plays a big part in Damien Torres’s artwork and depiction of Tibbi. However, there’s an abandonment of the modern comic book style of a corkscrew waist and silicon-enhanced perfect breasts as made famous by artists like Jim Lee in favour of depicting Tibbi as more full-figured with natural curves.
The dinosaur that pursues Tibbi is more bird-like and looks like a velociraptor. Giving rise to the opinion that artist Damien Torres is swayed by the evolutionary theory of velociraptors being feathered and descended from bird-like creatures than the depiction of Velociraptors made famous on Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.
Best Scenes in 'Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms #1'
As Tibbi gives in to the psychedelic trip she spirals into another world with her bathtub being the conduit or portal. This scene is met with swirling colours and is a virtual melting pot of incredible science fantasy. When she emerges from the lake that has spat her out she meets an environment populated by dinosaurs and giant mushrooms. As well as a planet which looks a lot like Saturn.
When the dinosaur pursues Tibbi she is in fear for life. Knowing that returning to the lake from where she emerged being her best hope she heads there and manages to transport back to her bathtub. With an intense following when the dinosaur tries to follow her. To stop it from coming through she stamps on its head until it comes clean off its shoulders. Leaving a dead dinosaur’s head in her bathroom.
Biggest Let-Downs of 'Tibbi and Her Time Travelling Psychedelic Mushrooms #1'
When Tibbi is transported the other world it seems to be populated by giant mushrooms and dinosaurs. While one is a clear reference to Alice in Wonderland, the other choice seems limited as the dinosaurs appear to be the only living creature in the other world.
The Soap Suds. Due to the precursor for Tibbi being transported to another world is her taking a bath, there are soap suds covering her lady parts, which seems strange for a comic book issue which is embracing nudity so early on.
My Kind Of Weird Score:
6/10.
