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Title: Starman: Sins of the Father (Book 1) by James Robinson ISBN: 1-56389-248-0 Publisher: DC Comics Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.92 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: This Book Introduced Me To The Golden Age Of Comics!
Comment: I grew up reading Marvel Comics. Time was when comics meant seeing characters in colourful costumes spouting macho nonsense and punching each other out. This book here showed me otherwise. And introduced me to new worlds of reading and the imagination!
The original Starman is Theodore (Ted) Knight. He appeared in comics around 1941. This here story, however, is about his sons, David Knight and Jack Knight. David inherited his father's costume and took over the family superhero business. Jack is cynical about his roots and moved on to become a junk-peddler! An old nemesis of the Starman, the Mist, shows up with his own children and waged war on the Knights - injuring Ted and killing David. Jack is then forced to reluctantly take up his father's mantle.
This first volume of the Starman paperbacks help the reader get into the setting of Opal City (beautifully designed in an art deco style by artist Tony Harris) and its many residents - the Knight family, the O'Dare family of cops, the Shade, the Mist family, a fortune teller, etc. The reader does not need any background knowledge of Golden Age comics to enjoy this - although, like me, you may want to track down the old comics in the Archive Editions just to get more into the history of it all. After all, Starman is ultimately about history. History and family. This is, to me, the most human comic in the world. You'll laugh and cry with the Knights. And you'll grow with Jack. And speaking of Jack...
James Robinson has done an absolutely amazing job creating Jack Knight. In many ways, James IS Jack - and in other sense, we all are Jack (we, as in, all those who grew up in from the materialistic '80s into the cynical '90s). Jack is about finding the old values without looking campy or sounding corny. Jack is about making being a hero without necessarily having to wear spandex. Jack is about clinging on to everything you love - whether it be junk or family legacy. Finally, Jack is about romance - the romance of chivalry and standing up for what's right.
Read this book. Get the rest of the volumes. And let's revisit the Golden Age.....
Rating: 5
Summary: The opening chapters to a classic
Comment: I think what's most amazing about this collection reprinting the first issues of James Robinson's EXCELLENT Starman series is that Robinson follows through on the promises he makes in these first issues -- the foreshadowing, the hints, the untold backstories -- and the result is an epic story spanning over 80 issues that actually has cohesion. That's very rare in comics these days -- especially at the "Big Two" publishers where the creative team on any given title almost never remains the same over the long-term. Robinson ranks as one of the best superhero comic writers in the business, and these first issues of Starman were one of the things that established that status for him.
Rating: 5
Summary: up there with Moore and Busiek
Comment: Almost everyone in comics got the wrong message from "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Returns." Rather than learning that superhero comics could be about more than adolescent fantasies they simply embraced the violence of those books and created comics that catered to a darker set of adolescent fantasies than the old Superman or Spiderman comics did. Comics didn't grow up; they just went from being geeks to juvenile delinquents.
I say almost everyone because there are a few notable exceptions where people have written superhero comics for grown ups, or to use Neil Gaiman's words comics that are "about something" (about something other than muscles, spandex, and maiming and killing "evil doers" that is). Kurt Busiek of course, and strangely enough Alan Moore himself are the examples everyone knows about. Unfortunately, James Robinson's work often falls between the cracks, and that is a shame, because "Starman" is a comic that is truly about something.
Aptly enough a good bit of what the comic is about is growing up. Early in the series Knight mocks things like family, duty, and honor, but Jack coming to embrace those things as well as responsibility is the heart of the whole series. Spiderman and Superman are great metaphors for adolescence, "Starman" is a story about coming out of a prolonged adolescence. Jack Knight isn't an obsessed Rorschach or Batman driven by internal demons in a near psychotic quest for vengeance. Rather, he's a self-centered hipster who gets in the superhero racket out of duty, family oligations, and loyalty to his beloved home town.
But really I make it sound all stodgy and positively 19th century Prussian, and it isn't. As well as being about something the series is a lot of fun. Robinson clearly loves all those old guys in tights and all the baggage that goes with them, but in his hands it really isn't baggage. You get explosions, evil plots, crime waves, superhero team ups, and everything you expect in comics, but you get meaning too. On top of that Robinson has a knack for creating characters and enough attention to detail to bring them to life. The O'Dares could have degenerated to Irish-cop stereotypes, the Shade a mere metropolitan killer, or Knight a hipster with superpowers, but none of them did. They all seem like living breathing people, and that's not something you can say for characters on a good many acclaimed television shows.
"Starman" was one of the best comics of the 90's and the best place to start is at the beginning.
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Title: Starman: Night and Day by James Robinson ISBN: 1563892707 Publisher: General Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Starman: Times Past (Book 4) by James Robinson, Tony Harris ISBN: 1563894920 Publisher: General Pub. Date: 22 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Starman: Stars My Destination (Vol. 8) by James Robinson, David S. Goyer ISBN: 1401200117 Publisher: General Pub. Date: 01 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Starman: A Wicked Inclination (Book 3) by James Robinson, Robinson James, Tony Harris, Wade Von Grawbadger ISBN: 1563894092 Publisher: General Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Starman: To Reach the Stars (Book 6) by James Robinson, Jerry Ordway ISBN: 1563897121 Publisher: General Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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