Review: Money Back Guarantee

Money Back Guarantee by Hunter Shea
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Dwight saw the ad for the nuclear sub in the back of a Spider-Man comic, he just had to have it. His mother Rosemary, flush from tupperware sales, was happy to get it for him. When Dwight nearly drowned in a mass of soggy cardboard, Rosemary wanted her money back!

I'm a fan of Hunter Shea's Mail Order Massacres so I snapped this up when it popped up on Netgalley.

As I said in my reviews of the previous two novellas in this series, I have fond memories of looking through the dubious ads in the backs of comics in the early 1980s so this series has hit all the right spots for me. Money Back Guarantee is no different.

When Dwight's cardboard nuclear sub arrived in the mail, I felt nostalgic but also sad for him. Once the sub became a soggy mess, I was solidly behind mother. Who knew the faceless corporation behind all that novelty garbage could be so sinister?

Hunter Shea's writing took me down a nostalgic road to the early 1980s, when I was a kid and everything was possible, including the stuff you could order from the back of comics. There are little nods to the early 1980s, like Tupperware parties, music, and movies, but I didn't feel like it was nostalgia-pandering. AdventureCo, the diabolic faceless corporation behind the junk, was much worse than I imagined.

While I think Mail Order Massacres is just a trilogy, I'd happily gobble up more of these like one of the flesh eating plants I saw in the back of Batman comic once upon a time. Four out of five stars.

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