Saturday Splash Page #131

 

"A Farewell to Stars," in Starman (vol. 2) #76, by James Robinson (writer), Peter Snejbjerg (artist), Gregory Wright (colorist), Bill Oakley (letterer)

Peter Snejbjerg came on with issue #50, and remained the series artist until its conclusion in issue #80 (ignoring the "resurrected" issue #81 from the Blackest Night event). At that point, Robinson was already a couple of issues into the "Stars My Destination" arc, aka the story where Jack goes into space looking for his new girlfriend's missing brother, the previous, bemulleted Starman.

I've heard the second half of Starman is generally considered the weaker half, with the space arc a prime culprit. And I can see it. Robinson spent the first four year building up Opal City as a major part of the book, then sends the book into space for a year, because he seems bound and determined to tie every star-themed character into the Starman legacy. So they get diverted into the 30th Century, so we can learn the Legion of Super-Heroes' Star Boy is going to become Star Man, and eventually return to the 21st Century under a different name.

Robinson tries to work this stuff into the build-up for the big "Grand Guignol" arc, having Jack help out Adam Strange on Rann, so that Adam will try to repay the favor later, but it does feel like an overlong digression. To say nothing of the detour into Krypton's past to meet Teen Rebel Jor-El..

That said, I do like Grand Guignol (minus the way things went with Nash, the original Mist's daughter.) I can appreciate Robinson trying to bring everything he'd spent 60 issues setting up together - all the foes, the Shade's backstory, the ghost of Jon Valor, on and on - into one big throwdown for the fate of Opal City's present and future. He wanted to do a big story, and I feel like he pulled it off. Made us care about the characters and the stakes enough to justify all the set up and foreshadowing.

Snejbjerg's version of Jack Knight is cleaner, better put-together. He smooths out a lot of the lines and wrinkles, makes the hair less of a rat's nest. Jack still dresses mostly the same, the aviator goggles and the leather jacket, but it doesn't look like he's slept in them for two weeks straight. Jack also lost the tattoos as a result of death by disintegration, followed by resurrection via Rannian science. I don't remember the dying having that much in the way of ramifications for Jack long-term, so I wonder if Snejbjerg just didn't want to have to draw the tats any time Jack was shirtless or in short sleeves.

The book concludes with a few last loose ends, a handful of mysteries Robinson hadn't revealed the solutions to yet. More important, it ends with Jack retiring from the role as Starman, passing the cosmic rod on to Courtney Whitmore, who would take on the name Stargirl. She's kept the title ever since, and Jack's stayed retired ever since. Even the Blackest Night tie-in issue was about The Shade and Hope O'Dare, nary a Jack to be found.

It's perhaps not so surprising in some sense. Jack always insisted he wasn't the kind of hero who was going to patrol. Just a guy who would step up when Opal needed him. And the bargain he made with his father was for Ted to continue exploring ways to use stellar energy to help people outside superheroics. Well, Opal has a new bunch of protectors by the end of the book, and Ted's not going to be doing any further research. It is surprising in that I can't believe someone didn't drag Jack back out in one of the half-dozen revamps DC's done in the last 15 years.

Sometimes the characters get left to their happy endings.

Starman Volume 7 - A Starry Knight

Solomon Grundy, got dentures from a horse on Monday.

Volume 7 is the beginning of Jack Knight's space adventure to find the lost brother of his girlfriend Sadie. A lost brother who also was the '80s Starman, Will Payton. Who I know nothing about, other than he had a mullet, I think. That's fine, Jack doesn't get anywhere close to him in this volume.

Instead, he, Mikaal, and a projection of his father from the Mother Box helping to power his Gilded Age spacecraft first stumble on an extremely verbose version of Solomon Grundy, then are drawn into the 30th Century for a quick team-up with a couple of members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Their return trip is a little off the mark, so they end up on Krypton, where they (naturally) run into a adolescent Jor-El.

The strain may be starting to tell on Jack. (This posting comic panels out of context is great. I should have started this years ago).

I'm curious how that story would have played out with Silver Age Krypton, with all it's weird rainbow fountains and whatnot. Jor-El still has the curious explorer streak here, but I imagine it's being discouraged more than it was in the Pre-Crisis version. After all that, they get back to the proper time and wind up on Rann.

When DC published Rann-Thanagar War as part of the run-up to Infinite Crisis, and cripes, that was a dog's age ago now, I remember some of the comics blogosphere taking mock-sides in the struggle. Most of the blogs I read seemed to favor Thanagar, on the basis of Rannians being a bunch of uptight weenies. Not all that different from the version of Krypton Byrne gave us, I'd say. I didn't have much of a horse in the race, other than Hawkman's an asshole, so I'm not siding with him. But given what they gave Jack and Mikaal as formal wear, Jack might have been better of staying dead.

This story is also the point when Peter Snejbjerg takes over as the regular artist, Steve Yeowell having handled the first issue in the trade and the third (the Grundy issue). Yeowell's Grundy is kind of freaky, not just because of his enormous teeth, but also how much more cruel he seems than normal. It actually feels like Yeowell's doing a bit of a Tom Mandrake look at times in that issue, which they heavy shadows occasionally blurring details or linework.

Of course, this Grundy is a lot more cunning than any Grundy I'm used to. Interesting how different this one is from the one Jack befriended, or the one that helps Culp in the big battle for Opal in a couple volumes. Well, Robinson spent a lot of time on the legacy of Starman, all the different people to carry the title, why not a legacy of Grundys, since he keeps popping back up?

Snejbjerg's first couple of issues, I feel like he's still getting a handle on Jack, but most of his other character work seems on-point. Granted, I don't have much room to judge most of these characters, like Mikaal's old foe, or Star Boy and Umbra/Shadow Lass, but they seem fairly recognizable to me.

So it's the usual sort of quest storyarc, where the character lands in places that are alien to them, but familiar to us. Convenient how that works, but we could always blame it on the Mother Box. That thing might not be in any hurry to go back to hanging around Orion, the big sourpuss. And Jack's enough of an oddball to make it interesting to see these places through his eyes. He's unphased when you might expect him to be, but gets shaken or stunned at the most unexpected times. Him grossing out Jor-El's dad by discussing, gasp, sex, was kind of hilarious. Although I'd half expect post-Crisis Kryptonians to use some incredibly damaging mind probe on what they'd no doubt consider lesser species.

Starman Volume 9 - Grand Guignol

I forgot to fold back the corner I dogeared to mark that page, which I think in certain corners of the Internet would get me tried as a war criminal. Never understood that bit of fanaticism, although I didn't even know it was a thing until stumbling across people arguing about it on Twitter (naturally). That's how I keep track of the passages I want to remember, or consider quoting when I do book reviews. How many note cards and bookmarks am I supposed to have on hand? Can you still read the page? Then it's fine.

Anyway, Volume 9 covers issues 61-73 of Starman, by James Robinson (writer), Peter Snejbjerg (artist), Gregory Wright (colorist), and Bill Oakley (letterer). Jack Knight returns from space just in time to deal with the army of villains assembled by an angry man with the Shade's powers who wants to cast the entire city into a horrifying dimension. Fortunately, there's a whole army of people to help Jack, too.

On the one hand, it's really impressive how many threads Robinson tries to bring together here. Plot lines that he established in the earliest issues of the series. I do love a story where the heroes who have to save the day are not the usual suspects. He moves between the various characters smoothly enough that you don't lose track of what everyone is up to. Plays to the characters' strengths - I enjoyed Ralph and Sue trying to solve a mystery while everyone else is scrambling around punching - and makes some of these villains I'd never heard of pretty interesting.

Not all of them. The Mist (the younger one) gets a raw deal. I don't know what it says that she seems like a mediocre villain, but she might have been the closest to Jack's arch-foe. Her dad is his dad's arch-enemy, Culp is the Shade's, who does that leave as Jack's, other than her? She's a sadist who talks big, but kind of chump, like Bullseye crossed with the Shocker.

The story bogs down in places. Trying to explain the wide range of crimes and personalities the Shade has demonstrated over his history as a character felt unnecessary. Maybe that's because I only know the character from this series. I don't know the stories where he had a "Shademobile" or plotted to blow up the world, so I haven't been trying to reconcile them. A few elements were set up earlier, but felt like they'd been left alone long enough that their sudden importance comes out of left field (the detective the Dibnys track down, for one). Granted I haven't bought volumes 5, 6, or 8, maybe Hamilton Drew pops up again there. Adam Strange and some of the other space trip callbacks felt out of place, like Robinson's trying to go a little too big. Especially since it seems to hinge on such personal animosities, Culp and Shade, the Mist and Starman.

But overall, I think the story treads on the good side of the line. I can't fault Robinson for trying to go big with it, to really have a grand climax.

Snejbjerg and Wright's artwork is clear and easy to follow. The heavy shadows contrast with the scattered flashes of light that normally mark the heroes fighting back. There's a two-page fight between Ted Knight and Doctor Phosphorous that's entirely an aerial view of Ted's home, with two different colors of light moving about across the panels. That was pretty slick. Culp's emergence, where his panels are darkness erupting against a bright red background, switching back and forth with panels of Jack being overwhelmed by the villain army done all in blacks and deep purples.

The next volume, which I reviewed two months ago, is the end of the series (not counting that Blackest Night tie-in issue where the title was "resurrected" for a month) and spends its time trying to tie up all the loose ends and decide where everyone stands when the music stops.

Starman Vol. 10 - Sons of the Father

This volume is mostly wrapping up loose ends. Jack's had a new addition to his life, and it forces him to make a choice about whether to keep being Starman or not. He spends some time in 1951, meets Superman (in the present, not in 1951), maybe helps his dad out, gets a last chance with his brother. We get some new status quo for the supporting cast and the city, and Courtney Whitmore gets to start her career as Stargirl.

The pace is deliberate, a lot of time spent on quiet conversations between one pair of characters or another. The big fight was in the prior volume, this is the aftermath. It has the feel of Jack taking his time, soaking it all in before the end. Or James Robinson trying to make a complete ending he's happy with. I wonder how well he succeeded on that front. At times it does feel like a history lecture at times, when they're recapping the history of the Starman legacy. I've read the issues guys, I don't need a 10-page Who's Who entry. But for the most part, it sticks to advancing or concluding characters' stories, and Robinson had developed them enough I wanted to know how things worked out.

At this point, I have 6 of the 10 volumes, mostly missing the middle third. I'd read enough reviews to know Robinson has a, let's say interesting, ear for dialogue. Jack especially speaks in phrases I wouldn't expect anyone to actually say. I mostly chalk that up to an affectation on Jack's part, like his taste in clothes or pop culture references. I'm actually more bothered by all the caption boxes filled with cursive handwriting from the Shade's journal. I can read cursive, but it's not fun trying to read it in these small boxes. It's actually a lot worse in Volume 9, where there's a lot more of the Shade's journal carrying the exposition load. I don't envy the letterer, Bill Oakley, having to deal with all that.

I prefer Peter Snejbjerg's art to Tony Harris'. Snejbjerg's is a little smoother, Harris' work seemed a bit scratchy, which maybe fit better for a rookie Jack Knight, struggling to get by. Snejbjerg seems to favor heavier inks, deep shadows for high contrast with Gregory Wright's colors. And there's a lot of variety in the colors, from the black-and-white spirit realm David inhabits, to the bright blue skies over Opal, to the deep reds near twilight in Ted Knight's 1951 home. It's all very good at creating a mood. Mostly calm in this volume, but with the occasional frantic moment.

As far as I know, no one has messed with Jack Knight since the end of this series. Which is surprising, given how Geoff Johns and DC can't resist dragging out every other retired or dead character, even if their creator had made it clear he'd prefer they not do that. Even Jack's brother David was hauled out for that Blackest Night tie-in, where the book was "resurrected" for one issue. Jack oughta bottle whatever he's got and sell it to the others. "Step right up, get your Stay Retired Elixir! Guaranteed to spare you a gory death in some Event book!"