1197 ( )

Satisfied my need for superheroics, a reluctant hero, and weird supernatural shit. ( )

Excellent if a little uneven start to a benchmark series from the 90s. The Harris art is Mignola-esque in it's heavy inking and use of shadow. Robinson crafts an excellent blend of modern and historical comics that is a joy to read. It's like Watchmen without the dread or cynicism. Good stuff. ( )

I've owned the first volume of Starman for five years now(!), but my desire to read it goes back even further than that-- I remember reading about it in Scott Tipton's Comics 101 column, which rated it as one of the very best comic books ever. Thankfully, that turned out to be exactly that. Starman tells the tale of Jack Knight, son of the original Starman, Ted Knight, and a young man who never wanted to be a superhero... but found himself forced to be one by circumstances... and found himself starting to like it.

That "liking" is a key part of what I find appealing about this book. Starman goes to dark places, both narratively and visually, but it's often enjoyable, often fun. This isn't a series about a grim antihero, but one about someone who likes being a hero. There's a sense of joy, of enthusiasm, of heroism to the events that happen here. This book doesn't ask, "Do we really need heroes?", it just gets on with the business of having them. But it's not a Golden-Age froth fest; this is a story about terrible things happening to good people... just thank goodness that sometimes the good people can stop those terrible things. This is the ethos I like from my superhero comics.

This was writer James Robinson's first real big break, I think, and it shows-- in a good way. This book bursts with new ideas and reworkings of old ideas: the O'Dares, the Shade, the Mist, Mikaal, the "Conversations with David" segments (where Jack talks to his dead brother), the evil poster, the evil circus, the mysterious Hawai'ian shirt. There's a lot going on, and little of it is generic superhero vs. supervillain theatrics. I like how Starman has a third-person narrator, one with a distinct voice and tone. I think this was Tony Harris's first big break, too, but he also shines here, with art that's purposefully a little rough, and perfectly suited to the task.

Like a lot of DC's Modern Age work, this retcons levels of personality and depth onto Golden Age characters that, quite frankly, was not there to begin with, just like in Sandman Mystery Theatre. Most blatant in this regard is "13 Years Ago: Five Friends," a bleak story of how a few members of the Justice Society reunited to take out a killer cult-leader. The JSA stories in Crisis on Multiple Earths were never like this! But of course, I like this, and I like this mode of going about; this is the kind of thing I think the best modern comics do: respect the past, use it as a foundation to build on, but not be overly beholden to it.

I really can't say how much I love Jack Knight. He's a character I connect with on a deep level. His story is always compelling, and his supporters- particularly the Shade- are very interesting in their own right.

Since this is a repackaging of a repackaging, though, this review is more about the book than the story. Even though I already have some of the trades, this was well worth the money spent- I'm not sure I'd want to pay the full $45 list price, but it was definitely worth the $30 I paid. This is a particularly nice edition- good, heavy paper, excellent printing quality, none of the pages-falling-out problems the old trades have. I especially liked that Robinson's letter page essays were included- I'd not read them, since they were only in the single issues.

If you're a Starman fan at all, you'll want this. If you've never been introduced to the character, thirty bucks is not too steep for 450 pages of full-color comics. I can't wait for volume 2. ( )