Starman Omnibus 6

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of The Starman Omnibus Volume 6 (DC, 2011).



If my spirits sagged just a little with the contents of the fifth Starman Omnibus, it wasn't for long, because I knew that the sixth and final collection would be one to remember. Good heavens, did this series ever go out on a high note. I really admire the way that James Robinson constructed the epic "Grand Guignol" storyline, with its team of trapped heroes struggling against impossible odds and a city of villains. I like the way that he uses alternating chapters to first advance the story and then step back and show how the situation got to this point, elegantly and effectively dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts across some 2500 pages of the adventure up to that point. It really is a damn fine bit of writing.

One of my happiest memories of reading comics came with the climactic episode of that story. I had moved from Athens back to the Atlanta area and returned to town to collect my monthly books and visit my pal Dave Prosser, who now lives in Idaho. He, also buying Starman every month, hadn't found time to read the issue. Damned if I was going to wait until I returned home the next day to find out how this epic was going to wrap up, so while he fed and played with his menagerie of pets after a day's work, I curled up in a recliner to read it, and found cause to exclaim aloud three times as it unfolded. "Shut up! Don't spoil anything!" he would bellow back. I'm still not able to read one character's wildly unexpected, out of the blue demise without my eyes popping out of my head.

And as good as it is, I'm not sure that the last adventure, a three-parter set in 1951, isn't even better. There's a painfully mawkish episode of sentimentality to get through before it, but it's really worth it. There's an elegant grace to the way Robinson and artist Peter Snejbjerg finish up the saga and answer the series' final mystery. It's got another moment that retains its power to punch readers in the gut. You'll know it when you read it: when a character lets Jack know that he can hear music, a lump comes right up in my throat every stinking time. It's just excellent.

DC has really done this series right. The $50 price point for each of the six books has often been tough to swallow as my belt has had to be tightened, but the editor behind this series can definitely take a bow, because this is easily one of the best reprint jobs that the company has ever done. It compiles everything that Robinson wrote for the series, in proper order, with nothing skipped. The uniform design, the supplementary material, the commentary by Robinson, everything just shines with love and sincerity and the very rare case of this company putting somebody in charge who is determined to see it done well, and done right. When Grant Morrison finally ends his run on Batman, I want editor Anton Kawaski to be in charge of putting all that into an equally sensible run of books. That way, I'll finally read the dang thing.

Starman was one of the two or three best American comics of the 1990s, and its reproduction here is faultless. Loudly recommended.

Staman Omnibus Volume Five

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Staman Omnibus Volume Five (DC, 2010).



Well, I suppose that these had to hit a bump in the road eventually. As much as there is to love about James Robinson's Starman series, which originally ran from 1994 to 2002, there is the unfortunate, and very long, storyline "Stars My Destination," in which Jack Knight goes into outer space on a wild goose chase, hoping to find one of the previous, believed-deceased heroes to use the Starman name. This one, sad to say, gets a little tedious.

I'm not sure why this one never really worked for me, but it just feels endless. It's a series of episodic adventures on various planets, with Jack and his companions running into various other DC superheroes, but the journey never really engaged me as a reader. At the time, it felt like an agonizing wait, with the much more thrilling subplots back on Earth sidelined for far too long.

Once Jack does reach his destination, it really does feel like a mammoth cheat. There's a big battle in the company of some mostly forgotten characters, and Jack rises to the occasion beautifully, and there's a heck of a good twist just when things start looking good for our heroes, but the climax of the quest, which, eye-rollingly, involves four separate heroes who have called themselves Starman, doesn't see the triumphant return that readers will expect. It all ties together in a silly confluence of disparate trademarks, and while they do find the long-missing Will Payton and a happy ending is assured, it's almost like Robinson went out of his way to blow a raspberry at anybody waiting through all this business for the sake of funnybook continuity.

The storyline was the first without longtime artist Tony Harris, who co-created the series. After a few months of fill-ins, mostly by the terrific Steve Yeowell, a new artist, Peter Snejbjerg, takes over. To be fair, Snejbjerg's work is consistently very good and he hits the ground running with a lot of crazy demands from the scripts, but his episodes just aren't as vibrant to me as Yeowell's. Rereading this book, particularly a story where Jack and Mikaal run into Solomon Grundy, of all people, on a blue planet, just makes me wish that Yeowell had become the title's regular artist. Whatever your own preference, this is definitely a gorgeous book. I just can't help but wish Robinson had got to the point a little quicker.

The first four books in the series were all really great, and this one is merely pretty good, drawn well and with a wobbly ending. Still, with that business out of his system, the next thing Robinson would do with Starman would be the amazing "Grand Guignol" epic and the beautiful and tragic "1951" coda, available in the final book, which was released just this past week. Rereading all of "Stars My Destination" may occasionally be tiresome, but I'm reminded that the best Starman story was just a month or two away. Recommended for people who've made it this far, or for Steve Yeowell's fans.