Ever wanted a ray gun?

 

Now you can buy one of your very own thanks to Dr Grordborts, the brain child of New Zealand artist Greg Broadmore.

 

He's been developing a whole steampunk alternate reality for years now, ranging from physical props to art, comics, and animation.

Think pompous Colonialist buffoons armed with disintegrators, eh wot?

Amazing, madly talented, and quite cheeky.

The fun, steampunk and ray gun aspect of it is counterbalanced by sharp criticism of colonialism and the racist attitudes inherent in it.

Which is clever and interesting, but unfortunately, also serves to poison the pie, as it were, making it impossible to enjoy the escapist aspects of the altverse. Socially relevance comes at a cost. It gives the stories a serious underpinning, but the fact that the lead hero is a bombastic racist oaf makes them difficult to enjoy.

Just when you think you're escaping the surly bonds of earth into the land of unbridled imagination, of fun and rocket ships and ray guns, the ugly aspects of human society drag you back to earth and beat you about with an atomic two-by-four.

It's anti-escapist escapism.