Comics and Book Review: Momentary and Starstruck #6 Part 2

 

Part 1.  

Starstruck #6 (Epic)

I’m not sure if this is going to be much of a review, as much as an exaltation.  I got this comic after about 30-something years of searching.  The other reason this won’t be much of a review is because Starstruck is notoriously incomprehensible.  I can say that it looks awesome, it’s incredibly inventive, and is painfully smart and witty.  But, you’re not really going to figure out what’s going on.  This somewhat reflects from all of the characters in the story also not knowing what’s going on.

This could have been called feminist sci-fi in the 80’s when it came out, because it featured mostly female leads--half heroes (?), half villains.  Now, of course, Starstruck would be considered to be thinly-disguised patriarchal propaganda.  The women heroes, Galatia 9 and Brucilla the Muscle, are aggressively heterosexual and there are strong male characters, along with some weak ones.  The best issue of the series is probably #2, which just features Harry Palmer being a bad ass.  (Though he didn’t really seem anything like that in the graphic novel.)  At the end of the series, a surprising amount of sympathy is shown towards Harry’s final fate and even the foppishly, borderline insane Kalif Bajar. 

 

  

“Its science fiction, Jim, but not as we know it.”  The artwork is the selling point of the series.  The technology presented is as incredible, as it is at times whimsical.  It’s almost sci-fi by Dr. Suess.      

If you remember the Stellar Cartography Room from Star Trek: Generations, here’s the upgraded version.

I probably got the graphic novel from a Waldenbooks at the mall in the 80’s.  This included material that had originally been published in Heavy Metal.  I didn’t really understand it, but I loved the artwork.  The story itself was based on a play written by and starring Elaine Lee.  Artist Michael W. Kaluta worked on the production.  The two then teamed up to make a comic story about the play characters’ backstories.  Sometime later on a rare trip to the comic book store in El Paso, I found Issue #4 of a 6-issue limited series.  Somewhere shortly thereafter, I got #5.  So ended the 80’s.

What followed next was a near life-long search for the other issues.  It was an obscure, low-distribution comic, but I was determined to run down every issue by searching the bins of the every store selling comics I went to.  Before you laugh at the strategy, I did find three more issues like that.  Only the final issue was left to get, which probably had the lowest print run.  Of course, I could have gotten from an online source (I even looked for pirated pdf’s), but I enjoyed the chase.        

 

This series was remastered for a hardback edition years later, but didn’t include all of the issues, otherwise I would have bought it.  These pages, along with a bunch of new material, were published on a Starstruck website.  A new comic series was produced, but it’s an expanded version of Issue #2.  (Like I said, it’s the best issue.) 

 

I read an online interview with Lee at that time, who explained the story’s setting in a very succinct and understandable manner that the comic book never did.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think to save that interview and now it’s disappeared.  (So much for, “The Internet is forever.”)  There’s been a radio drama produced, probably based on the play.  I have an excerpt of it.  It’s fun listening to the actors completely twisting their tongues trying to force out the hyper-technobabble in the script. 

 

By coincidence, I had read all of my issues over a vacation week in December before I got the Amazon gift card for Christmas.  Starstruck was already on my mind when I started thinking of ways of using the card.  I finally broke down to order a copy of #6 to satisfy my curiosity as to how the story ended.  This wasn’t driven by my own mortality coming into play before I might randomly find it, perhaps so much as I’m doubting the continuity of civilization in general. 

I was not expecting a life-altering experience by reading it.  I was a little afraid to read it or that something would happen to me or the comic before I read it.  It was like this was somehow the culmination of my entire life.  I thought it would look good and would be incomprehensible.  It was all that, but the imagination in the artwork was stunning.  The story did resolve and was understandable to some extent.  I could simply recommend this series based on the experience.  Don’t try too hard to understand it; just go with the flow. 

 

Well now what comic book am I going to obsess over?