Uncivilized Books

Mammal Facts, part 1

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

By Jim Starlin. Colors by Glynis Oliver

Dreadstar #1 opens with a long, long, long ten-page recap. Vanth Dreadstar is a refugee from the Milky Way, which has been 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, cat-human hybrid and a 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.

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 galaxy. Now the two powers struggle for supremacy over the Empirical galaxy. It’s clear that 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, both literally and figuratively.

The first issue is a heist. The crew attack 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, and the crew fight hundreds of robots, all rendered on the page without too many shortcuts. I’ve always liked the way Stalin plays around with the grid. He’s unafraid to chop the grid into small slivers, to give the action an added urgency. He really likes 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 comic. 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.

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 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, and many comics around that time featured high adventure in space (Omega Men, Star Jammers, Alien Legion, among many others). But Starlin is an idiosyncratic creator and he does make it 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 huge 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 endanger their mission. We see how valuable she is to the Dreadstar crew. Very quickly she retreats in her private quarters and begin to ruminate on her life, which of course means we’re about to get Willow’s origin story. She joins up with Dreadstar after he rescues her in another operation (these events were apparently told in Epic Illustrated). She chooses to leave 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 onboard could be useful, so they decide to keep her around. Syzygy trains Willow how to use her mental powers, but she has some kind of mental block that prevents her from reaching full potential.

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 the kind 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.’

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 animal, she’s not so blind either. The white light stays with her, and in times of need she can call upon it. I’m enjoying this so far.

Tom K @transatlantis

By DG Chichester, Margaret Clark. Art by Denys Cowan & Bill Sienkiewicz. 

Covers by Bill Sienkiewicz, Kevin Nowlan and others.

Doctor Zero is just one series in an interlocked line of comics, called Shadowline. It’s a bit difficult to understand what’s going on in the first issue. The story follows several disparate events, a US bombing raid in Libya, nuclear terrorists on the Empire State Building, missile attack on World Economic Forum in Davos. The common thread is Doctor Zero, who seems to be orchestrating the events from behind the scenes. He sets the wheels in motion, only to show up, last minute, and save the day. In a way, this is the most obvious way to be a superhero in the world. The idea of ‘patrolling’ the streets seems impossible. How do you patrol the streets of a city of millions? The police force can’t even keep up! By setting up events himself Doctor Zero can easily ‘superhero’ them. He knows what’s coming, and he’s prepared, not only for the event, but the media frenzy that follows.

He’s got all the trappings of a superhero, a costume, powers; but Doc Zero seems to have an agenda all his own. Being a superhero seems to be part some kind of nefarious plan he’s been concocting from the ‘shadows.’ For you see, he, and ones like him, have been living in the shadows for a long time. They appear to be a parallel race of humans that have a variety of powers. Sort of like mutants or Inhumans. Anyway, as Doc Zero is engineering another superhero event in Africa, he is ambushed by St. George—another one of these shadow beings. Doc Zero kills St. George, and appears to suck-out her energy. Maybe he’s an energy vampire? Hard to tell. We’ll have to find out in the next issue.

As the series continues, Doc Zero is revealed to be an immortal (or at least very ancient) who has been around the planet since before humanity evolved. In fact in one caption, he says he walked on Gondwana, which would make him several hundred million years old(!!!). Maybe ‘zero’ means he’s the oldest of the Shadowline beings? His Machiavellian machinations are some kind of god-like need to intervene in human affairs. We need saving, and we know not what we do. These kinds of proclamations are frequent with Doc Zero. He clearly has a god-complex.

Occasionally there are hints of something else. For example, Doc Zero also swims with dolphins. He seems to be a good friend of dolphin-kind, who, according to him, “flaunt their abilities openly.” What does that mean? It’s never really explained. Of the dolphins he says, “I’ve reminded them of my offer to take them with me, when I go…” Go where? Is Doc Zero, and by extension, all Shadowline characters, alien? Or is this just another way to play with his godhood? It’s never explained in the five issues I read.

Art by Denys Cowan is awesome. These pages look a bit like his work in The Question, on which he was actually working on at the same time. In fact, Doc Zero is a dead ringer for Vic Sage. The whole package seems to be lifted from DC Comics. DC had a number of titles packaged in almost the same way: painted cover by Bill Sienkiewicz, and mature content inside. The Question, The Shadow, etc. Shadowline line seems to be conceptualized around the successes DC was having with anti-heroes and ‘real-world’ superheroes. In a way, this is a counterpoint to The New Universe, which also was supposes to be more ‘realistic.’ But New Universe was designed a lot more along the lines of Marvel’s main superhero universe, but with the constraint. Everything that happened in New Universe became ‘real, and unchanging history.’ It was essentially a new Marvel universe, but with consistency and constrained by ‘reality’ in a way that the main Marvel Universe wasn’t.

All issues (except #5) are drawn by Denys Cowan and inked by Bill Sienkiewicz. Each issue has a different cover artist. Apparently Shadowline used the same cover artist across the line each month. It gave the titles a nice visual unity.

Cowan and Sienkiewicz were also working together on The Question at the same time. The finishes on Cowan’s art are really remarkable. Sienkiewicz zeroes in on the strongest parts of the image unerringly. His black spotting is key. Once the basic blacks are spotted, and composition is secure, the rest can be whatever flights of fancy he deems right for the moment. He just goes balls out using all kinds tools and techniques with occasional odd choices. A messy perfection.

Look at that weird white-out mustache on the last panel of the left side of the spread.

Noah Van Sciver had a childhood around poverty, the Mormon church and complicated parents. Later on he had a girlfriend that maybe “didn’t get it”. Maybe he “didn’t get it”, either. Somebody else could’ve done more of a “psycological novel” with this. I’m glad that’s not what this book was trying to do.

There’s a very warm recreation of those memories. That warmth being there even when acknowledging the cruelty in some of it might be the most precious thing about this book.

The drawing has a perfectly tuned balance between representation and calligraphy, detail and emergency.