Before I begin, I would like to say a quick thank you to Santana’s Mexican Grill, without whom so much late night work would never get accomplished.
Now that that’s out of the way, I would like to talk about comics. Not our comics (not really anything new to report today), but some particular favorites of mine that I hope I can entice you folks to check out if you haven’t yet. The two comics that I would like to talk about are STARMAN from DC Comics, and PLANETARY from Wildstorm (which eventually became part of DC comics). Both of these comics I found in my early adulthood, at a time when I figured I had grown out of my “comic book phase”, and just like Michael Corleone in the Godfather, when I thought I was out… they pulled me back in.
First I would like to talk a bit about PLANETARY. Every issue in this series was written by the great, and slightly crazy, Warren Ellis, with pencils by the equally talented John Cassaday. The comic first came out in 1999, and was a real eye-opener for me in terms of what comics could be. I wont get into the details of the story, but the series’ tag line was “Archeologists of the Impossible” which sums it up as well as anything that I could say. Every issue had a different tone, often borrowing from other ideas, like giant monster movies, or Sherlock Holmes, but the over-arching story was always moving forward towards it’s conclusion. I’ve mentioned before that it’s important to me that a story feels thought out, and PLANETARY always felt that way, I never read an issue and thought, “What a cop out!” The art (with wonderful colors by Laura Martin) was always something to beautiful to behold as well. Despite numerous set changes throughout the series, Cassaday always was able to make his style fit, and fit well. While this comic was often delayed, it’s tardiness never diminished my interest in the book. Even though Planetary only had a short run, it was an important one to me. This comic was a gateway drug of sorts for me, showing me a world beyond the usual superhero fare. Until PLANETARY I didn’t think anything outside of X-men or Spider-man could hold my interest, and after just two issues of this comic, I was sure that I didn’t need to ever read a cape-and-cowl book again. At least, that’s how I felt until I started reading STARMAN…
STARMAN began in 1994, but I had never heard about it until 2003. STARMAN was written by James Robinson, with art by a variety of people, most notably Tony Harris (who also created the character with Robinson) and Peter Snejbjerg (who came in at about the halfway point of the series). When I first had this book recommended to me, I was deep in the throws of my “no superheroes” phase (thank you Planetary) and didn’t really think I would enjoy it much, but after reading the first arch (in musty back issue form no less), I couldn’t help but be compelled to keep reading. There were a few things that set STARMAN apart from the usual superhero story. First, every character in the book was written with great care, no character was around just to make the hero look good, or just to be a love interest, these were all fully realized people. When you read this book, it wasn’t just Batman or the Flash running around kicking butt, it was the hero, still kicking butt, but interacting with characters you knew as well as you know your family. Second, this story was enormous! Over the course of 80 issues (with the odd mini-series here and there) Robinson crafted a series took the hero through his journey, but tied together the legacy of any character ever known as Starman (there were 5 of them, one being a blue-skinned disco alien). The story did not always feel like it was moving forward, but every issue contained information that would be used at some point. Nothing was extraneous, even if it might have felt like it at the time. there were no loose plot threads dangling when the story was done. The art on STARMAN was also great. Tony Harris, who has evolved quite a bit as an artist since he began on STARMAN, brought an amazing energy to each page that he drew, and if you look at the first 20 issues or so of the title, you can see him develop as an artist. When Snejbjerg came in, he was just as capable a story teller, perhaps not as flashy, but solid none the less. Starman showed me everything a cape book could be.
If you haven’t read one or either of these, I would heavily recomend them both. You can find them both in trade form on Amazon, or probably in your local book store.
And for just a bit of Semantink goodness, here is a sketch sent to me by our wonderful DUST artist, Kevin Warwick:
Thanks for joining me, see you all next time!
So if your shirt or backpack feel a little bare, come find us and we will be happy to give you a button for as long as supplies last. I will release a new button design every day until comic con, so if blood isn’t your thing, don’t worry, there are more buttons on the way.