Since there won’t be regular site updates while I’m gone at Comic-Con International (there will, however, be updates here), I’m taking this week to do a little bit of advance catch-up on the large pile of books awaiting my attention.
SILVER STAR
Written and Drawn by Jack Kirby
Published by Image Comics
The King’s final substantive work gets the deluxe hardcover treatment from Image, as Morgan Miller (a/k/a Homo Geneticus) discovers his own power and tracks down others with similar gifts, all the while working to prevent the ascendance and domination of humankind by the first of their kind, Darius Drumm.SILVER STAR was created late in Kirby’s career, during the period where he finally worked with publishers that allowed him to maintain ownership and control of his characters and art. It finds him in fine artistic form, no question; these pages are packed full of ideas, some genius, some so absurd that you wonder if Jack wasn’t smoking a bit of weed while hunched over the drawing board. But uniformly, the books are terrific examples of the man’s creativity.
The one flaw here is one that cropped up even in his work for Marvel and DC. Jack is working without an editor here, and therefore no one tells him that his dialogue is flat-out awful in many spots. Silver Star meets a stuntwoman with similar powers as his, and he immediately starts calling her baby. In fact, he’s so leaden in the way he speaks, you wouldn’t have been surprised if he had called her “sugar tits.” His urban dialogue suffers in much the same way in a later chapter. Reading some of this stuff, you kind of question whether or not Jack ever actually listened to other people speak.
Still, not one bit of that detracts from how enjoyable this volume is. The book looks fantastic, and Image’s restoration and presentation are immaculate. The hardcover is the perfect way to treat it, too. The King’s work belongs on the bookshelf, always accessible for an afternoon of letting your imagination run wild. A bargain at any price.
/Mason
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