Starman Volume 1: Sins of the Fathers: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger (1994): James Robinson and Tony Harris's extremely enjoyable take on 'Legacy' heroes, as the younger son of the Golden-Age superhero Starman reluctantly takes up the heroic mantle after his older brother dies on the first day on the job.
New Starman Jack Knight, son of Ted, eschews the red costume and finned head of the hero's traditional garb for a leather jacket and smoked-glass goggles. And he'd generally rather be working on his "real" life as a buyer and seller of collectibles. But his brother's murderer(s) must be caught, and his father really is too old for this stuff.
Starman was one of DC Comics' most acclaimed superhero series when it ran from 1994-2001. It's a humourous, heartfelt delight with a healthy helping of Father Issues. Starman's home base of Opal City, another one of DC's fictional cities for heroes, is an eclectic place. It's proud of its resident hero Starman.
Jack Knight, like his super-scientist father, has no superpowers of his own. He fights crime with the Cosmic Rod, an invention of his father's that store all sorts of cosmic radiation that can then be applied by the rod in various ways, though most usually to allow Starman to fly or to hit a villain with a blast of energy.
Opal City also has an occasionally heroic guardian in the person of Golden-Age villain The Shade, who now makes his (immortal, non-aging) home in Opal City and hates to have his peace disturbed. The Shade would grow to rival Starman in fictional popularity. In this first volume, Jack must face an old villain of his father's, The Mist, one of DC's odder Golden-Age supervillains. I mean, he's basically a guy who can turn into a fogbank. A murderous old man with a grudge against Starman who can turn into a fog bank, that is.
Tony Harris's art is quirky and expressive, though the faces sometimes lack a certain continuity when it comes to characters. Jack especially takes awhile to settle down into a recognizably repeatable presence. But there's also real energy to Harris's layouts, and to his depiction of the quasi-mystical abilities of characters like The Mist and The Shade. This really seems like Robinson's labour of love, though, a comic book about a superhero who collects and sells comic books, among other things. Recommended.
Starman Volume 2: Night and Day: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger and others (1994-95): More fun with Starman Jack Knight as he runs across a sinister carnival, receives career advice from sympathetic anti-hero The Shade, and faces his first Legacy villain, the now-mist-powered daughter of Golden-Age Starman villain The Mist. Apparently, she's just Mist. No definite article.
One of the numerous minor characters to also be called Starman also shows up here, as does bizarre, long-time Golden-Age Green Lantern villain Solomon Grundy, here in dire need of a haircut. Fun art, mostly fun (though somewhat bloody) stories. Recommended.
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King containing the following stories: The Mist, Here There Be Tygers, The Monkey, Cain Rose Up, Mrs. Todd's Shortcut, The Jaunt, The Wedding Gig, Paranoid: A Chant, The Raft, Word Processor of the Gods, The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands, Beachworld, The Reaper's Image, Nona, For Owen, Survivor Type, Uncle Otto's Truck, Morning Deliveries (Milkman#1), Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkman#2), Gramma, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, The Reach (1968-1985; collected 1985):
Stephen King's second short-story collection ranges from the beginnings of his published career as a writer in the late 1960's to stories that were not published until the release of this collection. As always with his collections, King rewrites a lot from the originally published versions. Indeed, "The Raft" is entirely recreated: King has never been able to locate the original published story from the late 1960's, a story he was paid for but which he's not entirely certain was actually printed.
The result is a collection with more range than the first collection -- Night Shift -- but a certain drop in intensity and consistency. One negative is the inclusion of two of King's science-fiction horror stories, "The Jaunt" and "Beachworld," neither of which are particularly scary or well-imagined. The science fiction of interplanetary travel and robots and alien planets is not an area in which King is especially good. But by God, he's going to keep trying to write it even if doing so kills either him or us or possibly both.
Thankfully, both the straightforward horror and the darkly fantastic are handled a lot better. "The Reach" is probably King's best tale of non-horrific supernatural doings, a meditation on mortality set off the coast of Maine. "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut", a more Bradburyian effort, is also a lot of fun, while "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" is a solid examination of madness and writing.
On the horror front, we get the Lovecraft-by-way-of-the-drive-in romp "The Mist." "The Monkey" and "The Raft" are the best of the horror stories here, turning the mundane (a wind-up monkey toy, a popular swimming destination just a bit out of season) into the terrible. That wind-up monkey is one of King's best distillations of strange, explanation-resistant horror. I'd like to see it go a few rounds with the more benevolent wind-up Chattery Teeth of the much-later story of the same name.
Other stand-outs include the understated story of supernatural revenge, "Uncle Otto's Truck," and the murderous road-odyssey "Nona." The latter works beautifully as a gender-flipped companion to King's earlier novel Carrie, as it deals with many of the same gender and social issues from a different perspective. Highly recommended.
