Page 45 Review by Stephen
“You think I’m a hero.”
“I think you’re just like the rest of us. Just trying to hold things together while you find your way.”
A drop of water “plips” from a leaking pipe into a battered old bucket that threatens to overflow. So much for state-of-the-art spaceships.
“But I also think the role suits you. Back at the station I saw it first hand. You shine in a crisis. And you inspire loyalty.”
Zita surely does inspire loyalty and shine in a crisis… which is just as well! There’s a enormous swarm of giant Star Hearts heading towards Lumponia, threatening to strip the planet to bedrock. With multiple, mucus-green eyes and savage, rotten teeth, they are an unstoppable puce-pink plague and there may be nothing Zita can do because Piper and the gang have blasted off without her! Why would they do that…?!
Like most surprises, good or bad, it all begins in a cardboard box: a cardboard box dumped on a waste tip outside the city walls. Out of it struggles a raggedy robot, wobbly and more than a little bewildered. It’s roughly the size of a girl.
High above Piper is pulling in the crowds by putting on a show, presenting, “Zita! The girl who saved Scriptorius!” She’d rather not come out. But she has hundreds of fans drawn by the posters plastered all round the city, even down by the waste tip and the robot has seen one. It’s… intrigued. It finds an old mop head and uses it as a wig; it finds some green and white rags it finds in a trash can, a bucket of black paint and a brush. Slowly but surely it begins to look just like Zita and, when the two bump into each other it, finally morphs into an exact replica. Zita can’t believe her luck: the robot can take her place for the duration of the show while she and Pizzicato, her giant, sign-languaging mouse go off and have fun!
Hmm, great idea. Except that the robot is an Imprint-o-Tron, a model of mechanoids able to mimic with ease, but with one big drawback: they tend to over-fixate, really growing into their roles and rather reluctant to give them up. Also, that cardboard box had been dumped with good reason: the entire line has been recalled! Uh-oh, Jungo!
Brilliant sequel to ZITA THE SPACEGIRL which had me chortling until I choked. Some great gags and much mischievous rivalry between our space-faring gang. Also battles! Big, bombastic battles, and a few hints for the future as we meet Madrigal who remembers our Piper all too well, and she has a surprise of her own for him. It does come in a box, yes.
