It is creator Earl Mac Rauch's long-awaited story of Buckaroo Banzai's conflict with the World Crime League sort of after the events of the movie Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension , originally planned as a follow-up film, but the first movie in was not successful enough to warrant a sequel, so we now get it as a lengthy novel 23 years later.
The book is written entirely in-universe including the title page reflecting that it was published by the Banzai Institute Press! It is interesting to note that Pinky Carruther's Unknown Facts subtitle track on the Across the 8th Dimension DVD suggests that that film's novelization was ghostwritten by Reno for his friend, Earl Mac Rauch, as a favor to appease a legal dispute.
So who's the actual professional writer here?? Throughout the book, the expletive "fuck" is replaced with the more playful spelling of "phawk". Lord John Whorfin and his host body, Dr. Emilio Lizardo, are resurrected in this novel, seemingly a couple of years or so after their deaths in Across the 8th Dimension. But the pair were also resurrected in the 3-part comic book story from Moonstone Publications titled "Return of the Screw".
No explanation for the different stories is given. None of the other comic book stories are directly mentioned either. It seems that Rauch has essentially ignored the Moonstone output in the writing of this novel, even though Rauch himself was the story provider on those comics.
Possibly, Dark Horse Books as this novel's publisher, did not want references to a competing company's output included. The character of Mona Peeptoe may be named for the women's Mona peep toe pump style shoe. Throughout the novel, the Banzai Institute invention of the Go-Phone first seen in Across the 8th Dimension seems to have surmounted that of the cellular phones known in the real world. In the Buckaruniverse, most people seem to have Go-Phones. Though Penny Priddy appears in the novel, Buckaroo's first wife, the seeming twin of Penny, Peggy Priddy, is not mentioned at all.
