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Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar #1-2 (1982)

Dreadstar #1 (1982 – I read the newsstand edition of #1, re-published in 1985), Epic Comics

By Jim Starlin. Colors by Glynis Oliver

Intergalactic Refugee

Dreadstar #1 opens with a long, long, long ten-page recap. Vanth Dreadstar is a refugee from the Milky Way, destroyed by war. He settles on planet Nimbus in the Empirical Galaxy, where he tries to forget his old life and live in Peace. But, inevitably, war comes to Nimbus, anyway. A Monarchy starship lays waste to the planet leaving Dreadstar, Syzygy Darklock (a powerful magician), and Oedi—a cat-human hybrid and farmer—as the only survivors. They vow to end this war and become the core of the rebellion against the war. They are joined by Willow, a blind cybernetic telepath who can see through the eyes of her pet space monkey, and later by Skeevo, a smuggler.

Church & State

The war is between the Monarchy and Instrumentality. The Monarchy is what it sounds like, a feudal dynastic monarchy ruling half the galaxy. The Instrumentality is a powerful religious order led by Lord High Papal. They have taken over the other half of the universe. Now the two powers struggle for supremacy over the Empirical galaxy. Starlin is playing around with classic themes of authoritarian dominance, whether monarchic or religious, doesn’t matter. He sees both as two sides of the same coin. Both are wrong, and the struggle between them kills innocents. Dreadstar & crew need to free the Empirical Galaxy, both literally and figuratively.

High Polish

The first issue is a heist. The crew attacks an Instrumentality space station which is full of precious metals. Vanth wants the hoard of wealth to give them the funds to escalate their struggle against both sides.

Starlin draws the crap out of this issue. The environments are fully realized. The crew fights hundreds of robots, all rendered on the page without common visual shortcuts. I’ve always liked the way Stalin plays around with the grid. He’s unafraid to chop the grid into tiny slivers to add urgency to the action. He really wants visual density on a page. All the pages have either a lot of panels or are rendered with a lot of detail. He also doesn’t skimp on text. He really wants to pack a lot of information into the comics. The result is a pretty satisfying read. Even if the intro info dump is a little much, you come away immersed into a huge story. It made me pretty excited for issue 2.

Star Wars

The whole thing is really reminiscent of Star Wars. It checks all the same boxes: 

  • Science-fantasy, check.
  • Mystical swords and powers, check.
  • Empires bent on galactic domination, check. 
  • A scrappy crew caught in the middle, check. 
  • A furry companion, check. 
  • You can keep going and keep finding more similarities. 

And it makes sense. Star Wars made space opera fantasy really popular at that time. Many comics featured high adventure in space (Atari Force, Omega Men, Star Jammers, Alien Legion, among many others). But Starlin is an idiosyncratic creator, making it all his own. He injects his favorite themes: mysticism, religion, authoritarianism, and a sense of cosmic grandeur. A lot here is reminiscent of Warlock & Captain Marvel, his 70’s psychedelic cosmic comics for Marvel. Dreadstar takes all these concepts, themes, character types and mashes them into a massive, sprawling space epic that is all his own.

Dreadstar #2

After loading up on cash in the first issue, Dreadstar & gang continue their rebellion against the 200-year war between The Monarchy & The Instrumentality. The 2nd issue focuses on Willow, the blind telepath. She can read and affect the minds of humans and machines. We start out with Willow being a total badass as she effortlessly takes out a squad of military police that endangers their mission. We see how valuable she is to the Dreadstar crew. She quickly retreats into her private quarters and begins to ruminate on her life, which of course, means we’re about to get Willow’s origin story.

Willow

The Dreadstar crew rescue Willow in another operation (these events were apparently told in Epic Illustrated). She leaves her unhappy life and stowaways in Dreadstar’s spaceship. When she’s discovered, she has a powerful psychic outburst. Vanth & Syzygy decide that having a telepath on board could be helpful, so they decide to keep her around. Syzygy trains Willow to use her mental powers, but she has some mental block that prevents her from reaching her full potential.

Ditkoesque

Most of this issue is an excuse for Starlin to go all Ditko on the art. Much of the training sequence with Syzygy and Willow takes place on various astral and mental planes, mystical dimensions, and other realms. Panels are full of cosmic psychedelia Steve Ditko pioneered in Doctor Strange and other books. Starlin has always been into this stuff. Warlock was full of Ditkoesque psychedelic touches. We’re treated to squiggly cosmic pathways, portals to unknown dimensions, and blinding white energy emanations that are the ‘force that dwells within all of us.’ Starlin’s psychedelia here is more abstract, with thin lines holding large overlapping color fields. This approach gives the ‘astral plane’ a less solid, etherial vibe.

Soul Searching

Syzygy manages to identify Willow’s block: She was sexually abused by her father (this proved to be very controversial in future letters columns). To overcome her trauma, she enters—against Syzygy’s warning—the white energy of her soul only to be permanently blinded. But she triumphs over her traumatic blocks and becomes a powerful telepath. She accepts the trade-off: blindness for power. Dreadstar gifts her a space monkey, and now, by seeing through the eyes of the animal, she’s not so blind either. The white light stays with her, and she can call upon it in times of need.

This article is part of the Event Horizon series on comics. Click here to see others in the series.

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Silver Surfer Black 1 | Review

silver surfer black 1

Over on Ink Logging, I’ve written a short review of the great looking new Silver Surfer Black series from Marvel. It’s drawn by Tradd Moore. Here’s a taste:

There’s a barely restrained surrealist/trippy component to his drawings. The Silver Surfer series seems designed bring that element out in force. There are a lot of psychedelic flourishes, unusual angles, expressionistic renderings, complex layouts, etc. Moore seems to be really having fun here. There’s a surreal fluidity to everything. Everything is flows, undulates, and bubbles like… a lava lamp. There’s not much to the story… at least so far…

Read the entire post here.

silver surfer black by tradd moore
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Marvelous Melodrama

I’ve been enjoying Frank Santoro’s discussions on Marvel’s late 60’s and early 70’s romance comics. But, it seems to me that the key missing term in Frank Santoro’s discussion of Marvel romance comics is ‘melodrama.’ Only one commenter (Nate) used the term as he pointed out that Marvel’s 60’s super-hero renaissance depended largely on the drama that occurred in the heroes’ private life. Since large parts of the comics were devoted to super-heroics, the tension in the private life of say, Spider-Man, was heightened by deploying melodrama.

But the term doesn’t appear anywhere in the two posts Frank’s done so far and is only mentioned once by the above mentioned commenter. The lack of the term makes it makes it more difficult to discuss & distinguish the romance comics from other kinds of comics about relationships. Frank names the work work of the Hernandez Brothers as the direct heirs to the Marvel Romance tradition. But some of the commenters are trying to wedge other comics in. For example a commenter says:

“aren’t there a plethora of ‘alt’. and ‘art’ comics than focus on relationships, but don’t utilize the los bros. level of craft? or employ ‘craft’ in a different fashion?
this might be the gap where we can celebrate ‘clumsy’ or kochalka’s ‘kissers’ for it’s romantic heft.
i totally appreciate the notion of ‘rarity of romance’ within mainstream comics, or celebration of such expressions when they occur (or are un-earthed), but the variable revolutions that ‘alternative’ comics brought about are often under-discussed hereabouts.
romance, on some level, was one of those forces, to be sure.
were highwater or alternative under-celebrated publishers of ‘romance’ comics to a greater or lesser degree? i would argue, yes.”

The difference between Kochalka or Brown’s comics that focus on relationships and romance, and the Marvel Romance comics from the late 60’s is… melodrama. The drawings of Kochalka and Brown may be more cartoony and less realistic than the Marvel equivalents, but they tend to have a more realistic take on the actual relationships they describe.

The framing of the Marvel books recalls the classic framing devices of the melodramas of Hollywood. Douglas Sirk comes to mind, especially for Marvel’s earlier foray into the Romance comics in the 50’s. They’re full of dramatic close-ups, moonlit silhouettes, crying eyes, (kisses) etc. The 70’s romance that Frank is describing has plenty of that, but it also has a frenetic energy imported from Marvel’s super-hero line. If we were to look to a cinematic analogue, perhaps it’s the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (?)… although most of the comics in this case predate the films.

Frank is right that the Hernandez Brothers are the true inheritors of this tradition. Their stories are full of melodrama and they deploy similar visual techniques and effects. The title itself, Love & Rockets, could very well be the title for an 8 page romance comic during the height of the space age. Jaime’s work seems more classic, harkening back to Sirk hollywood mashed with pulp & science fiction. Gilbert’s influence is weirder, like Steve Ditko drawing a Fassbinder script. Anyway, looking forward to more romance post from Frank.

jilted-marvel-romance
from My Love #14. Art by Don Heck & John Romita.