Welcome once more to There She Grows,
It has been a minute, which in this instance means over five years, since There She Grows last posted a review about a Shrink Fan comic. Time to fix that, post-haste! Accordingly, this post will review Shrink Fan’s “Operation: Half-Off.”
Mac Rome served as the writer for this two-issue series and Amblagar served as the artist. Mac Rome has written a number of comics for Interweb to include, but not limited to, Giantess Fan’s “Bigger Than This,” Giantess Fan’s “Upsy Daisy,” and Shrink Fan’s “Small Change.” Additionally, he was a senior editor for parent company Interweb. Amblagar has also drawn several series for Interweb, mostly at Giantess Fan beginning way back in mid-November 2011 with “The Island,” but Amblagar only drew this single series for Shrink Fan.
Operation Half-Off’s first issue released on January 1, 2018, while the second and final issue released more than a year later on February 1, 2019. That was a long gap between issues, but in this case each issue was a full and complete story.
So, what is the story about? Well, the plot revolves around a number of female spies who use a high-tech device to reduce their mass in half. The first issue only involved one female superspy called Mercedes Ferrari (guess her folks really liked European sports cars). However, in the second issue she was joined by three other femme fatales: Agent Muffy Clunge, Agent Dolly Poke, and Agent Honey Potts. (SIDE NOTE: “Clunge” is British slang for vagina. Each of the new ladies names was a double entendre.)
Each of these women had a wrist-mounted device called “Half Off” which can reduce the user’s mass by half with each use. Note that it reduces mass (typically reported here on Earth as a person’s weight). Therefore, when a person lost one half their mass their height and other proportions were “reduced by a bit less than one fourth” per the comic’s narration.
Under the positive column, Mercedes and her espionage co-workers each had attractive figures. The art was pretty good and had a little variety with not just buff men and curvy ladies, but also a rotund yet muscular character shaped like Marvel Comic’s Kingpin. Albeit this guy was only five feet four inches in height so more than one foot shorter than the Kingpin. There was also a nod to Mercedes having a romantic past with a man she had met on a former mission so that was a nice allusion to her long history as a spy. All told plenty of sex between full-sized men and shrunken women plus melee combat between shrunken women and full-sized men made this an enjoyable read.
Regarding negatives, I could quibble about some of the coloring choices. In one panel Mercedes pubic hair was the same color as her skin. Additionally, Mercedes’ objective in the first issue was to steal a USB drive from an ambassador, but no idea why that was worth the risk of getting caught. Presumably, if she had been stopped with the appropriated data then she would have been tortured and/or killed. Obviously, we can assume that the data onboard was important, but it would have added to the tension of her mission if we know why her government supervisor wanted the thumb drive. It could have been a cure for some horrible disease or attack plans for an enemy nation whose disclosure would save countless lives, etc. To put this concern more succinctly, why did Mercedes’ mission matter? Still, the positives about this comic far outweighed the negatives.
Overall, I recommend Operation: Half-Off. Fans of shrinking women can read it by getting a membership at Shrink Fan here: https://www.shrinkfan.com/
This review was written by SolomonG and is protected under Fair Use copyright law.
All Rights Reserved.
There She Grows 