THE GALINOS

On distant planet Gala, many Galinos have a bad case of wastefulness. Sound familiar?

Like any planet worth its salt, Gala has a nice variety of kids: some with one eye, or two, or three, or two heads, or a head like a hand. Amavisca has created an everyday gang of ragamuffins who like to eat candy bars, play with computers, and make a mess. One day they unearth—maybe that’s ungala—an oracular computer by the name of Galalpha 8 (computers are alive on Gala). Galalpha foretells of Gala’s environmental ruination: their galamobiles (cars) spew pollution, as do their galactories, killing the galatrees and drying up the galakes. Tierki and Kurti take Galalpha 8’s dire warning to heart, although their friends don’t give a hoot. “Several years went by, but all seven friends still looked the same. (The secret is that Galinos stop growing when they reach seven years old!!)” Villamuza’s artwork also has a childlike quality, about in the 7-year-old range. The Galinos lose any distinctive appeal—there is little—when they turn out to be little but earthling clones in Halloween gear. They even like toilet jokes: “Every time she went to the bathroom to poo, she would clean her gala-butt with tons and tons of toilet paper.” Tierki and Kurti decide on a plan: they’ll put all their filthmongering friends on a spaceship and send them to the only other self-destructive planet in the universe: Earth. How subtle.

Cold comfort to know we are the not the only environmentally destructive hooligans in the universe.