8/18/09 (LOS ANGELES) Andy Grossberg

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW

TITLE: Elephantmen Volume 1: Wounded Animals
Writer: Richard Starkings, Joe Kelly
Artist: Moritat, Ladronn, others
PUBLISHER: Image Comics

Richard Starkings’s comic series Elephantmen has a really big problem. Maybe I’m just biased by the prestige hardcover edition put before me to review, with a good intro and alternate covers included. Maybe I’m just easily influenced by gorgeous art from the likes of Moritat and splendid cover art by greats such as Ladronn. And maybe I simply have a thing for good stories that can stand on their own or be read as an ongoing series with an unobtrusive yet obvious arc linking them all. Maybe that’s it or maybe it’s because the entire package itself is nice enough that it makes me wonder how I’m going to fit Elephantmen into my comic buying budget every month. You see, that’s the problem with this series: it’s good enough that if people only read it and knew about it they’d be buying it in droves.

Once you crack the cover you will be shocked by glorious artwork that’s a shout back to the heyday of comics for grownups. It belongs next to titles like RanXerox and Den in the vanguard pages of the greatest Heavy Metal issues plucked from the newsstand and read furiously, absorbed by impressionable creative young adults. Yet I fear it is lost, buried among exposed corpses in a graveyard of mediocre titles, strewn with the carrion on the shelves of the dwindling specialty shops, off sale in a month, undiscovered bones bleaching in the sun. But it has to prevail!

The story is told with a clever, European pacing, also a throwback to the best of Metal Hurlant reminding one at once of books like Inkal. But this is something unique, like Richard’s Hip Flask, his anthropomorphic animal private eye, but somehow way odder than even those tales, some strange chimera made of Blade Runner and Pinocchio. It all takes place in the same world where the titular Elephantmen, corporate-created super soldiers grown from human-animal hybrids, find themselves just trying to mesh with a future society that eagerly awaits them dying off while feigning tolerance in the name of human rights. They seem to just want to fit in and live if that’s possible. Moritat’s art shows a mastery of the animal form and a use of proportion that emphasizes both the Elephantmen’s strengths and weaknesses. The other artists that have contributed to the series are all of course beyond competent but the characters really live under Moritat’s accomplished pencil!

The combination of fantastic art and a reliable, forward-moving story drive this comic at a great clip yet there is a certain drilling down in places as well, plumbing some of the most simple moments in life but projected out of context in this dangerous future. Early on a sequence has a little girl talking to one of these redeemed killing machines ending up at a bus stop and it seems so normal, so simple, so much a part of daily life that you can see it happening now as easily as in Richard’s nightmare tomorrow: The innocent questioning the nature of “the monster.”

That’s not to say there aren’t problems with the book. The diversion into a pirate fairy tale near the end of the volume felt almost like a filler story (while a perhaps unconscious nod to The Black Freighter as well!). Meanwhile the non-Moritat illustrated issues jarred this reader as I was screaming through the pages. The absence of back matter like sketches and such is a little disappointing as well because I’d like to know the full story as to who worked on which chapter and why. It lacks a credits road map considering the talent involved. I’d also like to know what sequence the original stories and issues came in, if there were for example short stories from other collections included as with later volumes. But overall the package is really strong and the whole of Elephantmen transcends these and any other minor flaws. This book is really worth checking out and that brings me back again at last to the biggest problem of this series…

Sure the comic is visible; you can see the ads all over the place online if you go to any comics site but this is more an indication of Richard’s marketing savvy than a wave of popularity from a growing readership. This series is visible but under-appreciated and not selling what it should be. Yet it’s worth the time and money to pursue. I think many comic readers just assume everyone else is buying it, but they shouldn’t assume anything, they should buy this comic. Every comic reader that appreciates mature science fiction should read this graphic novel. You will be hooked and that’s a good problem to have.

8/18/09 (LONDON) Joel Meadows

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW

TITLE: Starman Omnibus Volume 1
Writer: James Robinson
Artists: Tony Harris & Wade Von Grawbadger
PUBLISHER: DC Comics

Starman started life as a spinoff out of one of DC’s sprawling crossovers, Zero Hour, back in 1994. Starman was one of the JSA’s founder members but DC hadn’t had much success trying to resurrect the name over the years: Jim Starlin turned Starman into an alien prince while the ’80s saw a straight superhero title, which ran for about four years before running out of steam. Robinson and Harris’s Starman was a little bit different: Jack Knight was the son of the original hero, Ted Knight, and he is thrust into the role when his brother is murdered.

This omnibus is part of DC’s attempt to put some of their more worthwhile back catalogue into durable hardcovers and with seventeen issues reprinted here, it’s a really nice idea. Starman does come from the revisionist hero concept that was so popular in the ’80s and ’90s but unlike many of its contemporaries, Robinson understands the legacy attached to the character and so, rather than discount Starman’s past, he incorporates it while adding his own spin to proceedings. Harris’ art starts off as rather primitive and a little bit ugly but he soon grows into the settings and makes Starman his own. The team also created a fantastic place, Opal City, which is a character in its own right with a mythology, leading players and a dark secret. But the creators also took what was a minor DC villain, The Shade, and turned him into one of the most likable and complex figures in modern mainstream comics. Recast as a gentleman villain and the soul of Opal City, The Shade is a fantastic foil for the activities of Jack Knight and we get to see a story from The Shade’s past, set in 1882, which reveals his interaction with real historical figures like Oscar Wilde.

Starman is not your typical superhero book and, in fact, there is an intelligence and an erudition here that no other modern superhero series has ever possessed. By the end of this first hardcover collection, the reader is fully invested in the main protagonists. Jack Knight is a flawed and contemporary hero who is easy to empathise with, having had the Starman role foist upon him. The ’90s were a pivotal period for comics and Starman was one of the market’s most important and groundbreaking series. It is admirable that the company is making the whole run available in the Omnibus format. If you’ve not read Starman before, then you have an enviable time ahead of you, because Robinson, Harris and the other artists who also contributed create an increasingly sophisticated graphic narrative that immerses the reader.