Starstruck: The Luckless, the Abandoned and Forsaked

Starstruck

by Elaine Lee, Michael Kaluta

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Science Fiction, Marvel, Comic Book

80 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1989

Reviews

[Óscar Trobo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relectura. Oscilando entre valorarlo con 2 o 3 estrellas. El problema es que en 80 páginas que tiene la “novela gráfica” solo nos presenta el mundo y los personajes. No se ve muy bien por dónde van a ir los tiros, suponiendo que los tiros vayan hacia alguna parte y no sea un compendio de historias cortas ad eternum.

No lo he disfrutado mucho pero una vez acabado, hojeándolo, me han entrado ganas de más y supongo que acabaré leyendo el volumen recopilatorio de Norma. Así que debe ser un 3, supongo.

(¡Se publicaron 75 Novelas Gráficas Marvel entre 1982 y 1993! ¡Y la mayoría parecen terribles! ¡Quiero leerlas todas!)

[B.E.N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I looked up Starstruck as it was mentioned as an underappreciated classic of comics, and the description made me curious. After having been on a bit of a binge of 60s-80s Metal Hurlant comics, I wanted to explore this one too.

I believe this is the collection of the original run from the 80s, not to be confused with later editions, which apparently add pages and have different artwork. I will have to get back on that, as finding this and differentiating it from other editions proved a bit confusing.

Starstruck the comic series is actually a prequel to a stage musical, one which I have never seen. I suspect most readers will find themselves in the same situation, though there is apparently an audio play available for anyone who wishes to have the background available to them. I can't say whether that will help or not.

Starstruck is a space opera, a whimsical, satirical, dramatic, larger-than-life story of people with different agendas clashing in some sort of future-space-pastiche. I'm tempted to say it's a bit like if Dune was written by someone who just wanted to take the piss and have a good time. The series is, to my understanding, remembered as an important early woman-led graphic novel project, and some seem to view it as a significant feminist work in an otherwise overwhelmingly male-dominated industry. I'm not really qualified to say to what degree it actually is, but it certainly has many female characters, both heroic, silly, scheming, and so on, who overall seem to be the main focus of the story.

The story, however, is deeply confusing. How much this is due to me not knowing the play I can't tell, but it is frankly a headache-inducing mess to read at times. There are multiple narrations going on simultaneously, massive, extremely visually busy pages, an enormous roster of characters who all have their own sometimes inscrutable agendas, lots of made-up jargon stuffed into dialogue, and on top of that several of the main characters are visually almost indistinguishable from each other. Reading this, I had to take one issue at a time, trying to slowly digest it. I believe I more or less understood the overarching plot in the end, but there are still several important plot twists and turns I tried to look back to see if I had missed, because they seem to instantly appear and you just have to trust the comic that everything makes sense.

Reading this really feels less like reading an unfolding, character-driven drama, and more like gripping onto a rollercoaster ride where stuff just happens and you're just going to have to accept it.

In the most basic sense, the plot seems to center around a space station where several former soldiers (Proldiers) in a war have either settled down or are passing through. These ex-soldiers are at odds with a fallen tyrannical dynasty (the Bajars) whom they helped overthrow, ushering in the current, seemingly semi-anarchic (but also militaristic?) state of the universe.

The dynasty appears to be plotting the destruction of the leader of said ex-soldiers, who is currently in hiding, and they are tugging at certain strings to pull her out of hiding. Additionally, there are many other factions and persons that have their own agendas mixed into this main conflict. Complicating things is that the female leader of the soldiers has not only been cloned, but also become the basis for a line of female pleasure androids, so the reader is going to be seeing the same face repeated a lot, and not always be entirely certain who is who. This IS plot-relevant, but it is also confusing as hell. Additionally, several of these similar-looking characters have loosely similar-sounding names, which is probably also thematic and clever, but made it even harder for me to parse who exactly was doing what.

While the plot is confusing and frequently frustrating, the art is usually fascinating and engrossing. The designs are over-the-top, avant-garde and just plain silly, a postmodern mishmash of all sorts of traditional costumes, retrofuturism and comic-book gaudiness. It should help give the reader the impression that this is not a story that takes itself overly serious, and frankly, neither should the reader.

[StrictlySequential · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ISBN 0-87135-001-7 listed on copyright page and back cover is the same as another GN in the series "Void Indigo"

This edition isn't #ed but below Lee and Kaluta's names on the title page there's a signature line. Mine only has Kaluta's which fills out the second half of the line but sorry nerds- none will have authentication.

This is a sort of prequel to Lee's play which examines events that led the characters into their roles played on stage. It seems that Lee assumed that readers had knowledge of the play because I read the first story three times before I had grip of the who-who's and the what-whats made more difficult within super-future-weird scenarios that are plenty hard to understand on their own.

I acclimated to the other three stories but by no means as easily as if there was a dramatis personae page -just like theatre courtesy- with one or two sentences for the main characters that didn't give any plot away. If the single page included the same brevity about time and setting the whole book would've been much better understood thus a better story in general.

The art is spectacular in it form, detail, background, and all the rest- except for the dicey coloring job.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

The art has a wonderfully nostalgic 80s Euro feel. Reminiscent of Moebius or Aeon Flux. Unfortunately, this is one of those artistic passion projects (as relayed in the introduction, it seems this started as a stage play), where the creators are too immersed to tell a cogent story. I'm sure this makes total sense if you've seen the play and already know what's going on, but to a newcomer, it's a jumble. Around half way through I started wondering if it would make more sense if I didn't read any of the text and just enjoyed the art, and while I didn't actually try this method, I think that's how I would recommend this to others.

[Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautifully illustrated. Utterly fucking unintelligible.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This makes little or no sense unless you've read or seen the play "Starstruck." While the play comes across as silly (Elaine Lee's own description of it in her preamble), the graphic novel is a sophisticated exercise in world-building that very nearly completely jettisons any sense of plot in favor of delving into origins and development of characters central to the play. As a comic book, it is difficult to read, sometimes frustratingly so, with multiple layers of narrative sometimes taking place simultaneously. However, it is this challenge which gives it the cult status Starstruck enjoys in the comic book world, as it pretty much demands a reader to revisit again and again to peel away the layers of Lee's narrative and deeply examine Kaluta's artwork to fully appreciate the fictional world they have created.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book is well written and has even better illustration, it is a prequel to another story and makes the assumption that you know this science fiction world well enough so the authors need explain nothing. Which is probably not a good idea. For those who know the world and its story, it is an amazing coda, but it is not the place for someone unfamiliar with the previous works to step in. In fact, it might be completely incomprehensible for anyone new. However the art, like all of Michael Kaluta's published art, is exquisite and some people might like to buy this volume simply for the art alone.

[Jay Hancock · Rating 2 out of 5]

82 pages later I have zero clue what the fuck I just “read”

[Marco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apparently this "Graphic Novel" consists of nothing but reprints of material previously published elsewhere. Very disjointed collection of vignettes about characters you don't really get to know, none of which even approximates anything resembling an actual story.
Not for me.
Great art, though.

[Brett]

Comics,Graphic Novel

[Little Timmy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An OK comic story. good art but bad plot. Not recommended