Starman

[Guest Sassquatch]

Since 212 brought him up, what are everyone’s opinions on the 3rd Starman, Jack Knight?

 

When his series hit stores in 1994, it was considered one of *the* hot books of that year and his books sold extremely well for another couple years after it's debut.

 

I'm just curious as to what you all thought about him in regards to:

 

Character strengths/flaws that made him interesting/boring to you.

 

I'll post my thoughts later but I just felt like tossing this topic out here and see what the rest of you thought about him and his book.

[Guest areacode212]

I'm watching Smackdown, so I'll be quick...I liked the fact that James Robinson managed to tie together every single Starman from DC into this series. And even though Tony Harris's style contains some of the elements that I like to bash Alex Ross for, he gave the series a really cool, distinctive look (and he drew nice-looking buildings) and I wish that he had stayed until the end. I did like Snejberg's art, but it took a lot of getting used to after Harris.

 

Also, it was kind of refreshing to have this somewhat unlikeable, hipster doofus in his mid-30s as the star of his comic.

 

I fucking hated the way The Mist got killed off in such a cavalier, meaningless way. She was built up from the beginning to be Jack's arch-nemesis: she killed the JLE, she got a Girlfrenzy one-shot, but in the end, she was a minor character in "Grand Guignol", and got killed out of nowhere. Argh, that drives me insane.

 

This was the only "Zero Month" title to really be a success, wasn't it?

[Guest areacode212]

Speaking of Starman, has everyone seen this? Looks like a Starman TV series may be coming to ABC.

[Guest Sassquatch]

Starman was a book that came out in a time when the comic book industry was robbed financially as well as creatively. Both Marvel and DC were sucking the meat missle in terms of putting out good books. Then all of a sudden, DC happens to find this virtual nobody in James Robinson and they take a risk and make him the writer of their new Zero Hour spin-off book, Starman. Many people predicted that the book would not make it past 12 issues. Boy were they all wrong.

 

Robinson's greatest achievement as the writer for Starman was the supporting cast he had created for Jack Knight (Starman). Unlike a lot of the writers today, Robinson made each of Jack's supporting characters integral to how Jack went about his duties as a super hero. Jack's dad the original Starman Ted Knight was at times the star of the book when Robinson would give Ted his own problems to deal with such as fighting Dr.Phosphorus in his house. Or how Robinson took a paper cutter character with a lot of backstory like Solomon Brundy and helped revamp Grundy's character entirely by having Grundy understand compassion and remorse for his past actions.

 

For years everyone would mention how Spider-Man's supporting cast was the best in comic books. Starman's supporting cast could give Jonah and MJ a run for their money if compared to one another in my opinion.

 

Robinson was also Mr.Fixit in how he took these loser villains like the Mist, Dr.Phosphorus, the Shade, and Solomon Grundy and turned them into characters that meant something and got readers attentions. Kurt Busiek has been given the moniker of "Mr.Second Chance" when it comes to taking super villains that nobody cares about and then revamp them so they are not guys that fans blow off. Robinson could give Kurt a challenege for this award.

 

Opal City was also an achievement of Robinson's. When Starman was selling big, Opal City became as synonomous as Gotham City or Metropolis when it came to naming off DC city's. Opal was like a suburb that could be like your town. Almost everyone in the town knew one another and it had a great vibe in that fighting off super villains would be the seond thing in your mind you would be thinking about if you visited the town. The police force in Opal actually looked as if it could have held it's own against some of the super villains that passed on through it due to their determination and guts. The local pub also reminded me of "Cheers" at times in the atmosphere that inhabited the bar where you could sit back and forget about the bad day you had. Nice people and lots of entertainment.

 

Back to what I was saying earlier, in that Robinson desrves to be considered "Mr.Fixit" after the way he revamped the Mist and made him and his family from being Golden Age jokes to modern day badass's. More specifically, the way that Robinson made the Mist's daughter Nash into one of DC's up and coming core villains. If you thought I was overstating how much DC pushed Killer Croc as a bad ass when he first showed up, then you did not read about Nash. This chick went from a schizophrenic nobody to becoming one of DC's most prominent femme fatale's. She drugged Jack and had sex with him only to have his child and use it against him later on. Nash also single handedly killed off the Justice League Europe in convincing fashion as she murdered each member one by one. She had Solomon Grundy and the blue alien Starman kidnapped and they were nearly killed in the process. Nash showed no remorse in any of her evil acts and you couldn't help but not be interested in what she was going to do next. 212 mentioned it above but Nash was needlessly killed off in the final storyarc after she had been built up for years as some chick you do not want to mess with. Truly a waste of a good villainess which DC has lacked in for years. Nash could have been DC's "next big super villain" but that was all pissed to Hell like most of DC's projects in the past as it concerns a new villain being built up and then snuffed off.

 

212 also brought this up above but I thought I would add on what he said.

 

Jack Knight was your average joe before he became Starman. His brother David was the one who wanted to hold the Star rod and protect the city. But David was not really cut out for the job and his sloppiness is what got him killed at the hands of the Mist's son. Jack was then forced into the role of the town's savior after he realized that his dad could no longer be the Starman and that his brother David was dead. Jack has the Peter Parker appeal with fans. Peter and Jack lead pretty ordinary lives with your everyday type of situations. Anyone of us could be Jack or Peter given the right circumstances. Each of them were forced to be super hero's by proxy after it became apparent that their respective city's needed someone to help them out and the heroes donned the mask and rod and set out to protect the city. Yet Peter was dealing with women troubles and bill paymenets and Jack couldn't find a good women if she stuck her pussy in his nose along with trying to find a goddamn beer in his house.

 

Robinson made Jack seem real in the sense that fans could easily relate to Jack's problems whether he was a super hero or not. Nash wanted Jack's balls and most guys could relate to something like that. Some crazy ex-girlfriend wants to make your life a living Hell and she pulls the old "become a preggo and blame it on the boyfriend" route which is something that does happen in everyday life. Jack also wanted to play the role of the super hero as less as possible. He would have rathered hung out in his local pub and knock back some cold ones rather then deal with the Shade's riddles of doom. We've all had friends that piss us off in some way and do little to fix that problem.

 

I can not stress how well Robinson made Jack's character into someone that people could easily relate to while also being one of the most powerful beings in the DCU. That takes some skills and knowledge which Robinson showed on a monthly basis in Starman. This book is highly recommended reading material and should be required reading in high schools. Awesome stuff (till the end which sucked terribly).

[Guest realsandman420]

i agree.

if you haven't read it...shame on you.

find the issues or get the trades....but read this fantasic series.

[Guest Sassquatch]

You are all better off stopping at issue #60 in the series. The book pretty much went downhill after DC had announced that the book would be canceled and possibly given a new series to gain higher sales.

 

Sadly that did/has not happened and I wouldn't hold my breath to see a new regular Starman series released anytime soon.

[Guest realsandman420]

You are all better off stopping at issue #60 in the series. The book pretty much went downhill after DC had announced that the book would be canceled and possibly given a new series to gain higher sales.

 

Sadly that did/has not happened and I wouldn't hold my breath to see a new regular Starman series released anytime soon.

don't think it was canceled due to bad sales....james robinson ended the series like neil gaimen did with sandman. he had a finite ending in mind. and then that was it...end of series.

 

still a fantasic series.....

[Guest Sassquatch]

"don't think it was canceled due to bad sales....james robinson ended the series like neil gaimen did with sandman. he had a finite ending in mind. and then that was it...end of series."

 

- realsandman420

 

 

The book was selling in the low 80's region when issue #60 came out. Considering that just four years before that it had been one of DC's highest selling book, DC decided to cut its losses and had the book cancelled rather than put out a sales bomb like Starman.

 

The title was cancelled because its sales were in the gutter and DC did not want to continue to pump money into a book that had become an embarrassment.

 

Do some fucking research once in a while and actually know what the Hell you are talking about rather than blow smoke out of your ass into everyone else’s face.

[Guest areacode212]

I've always been under the impression that Starman did end because Robinson had finished telling his story, not because it had been cancelled. I'm working from memory here, but pretty much every "future event" that was laid out in the timeline (Jack goes into space, comes back, finds Opal destroyed, stops being Starman) from Starman Secret Files (published a year & a half before Starman #60), came true in the series. None of it felt rushed, either...in fact, issues #61-80 were very leisurely paced. It just doesn't sound like DC was hell-bent on cancelling the series considering it lasted another two years.

[Guest Sassquatch]

The book was bleeding red ink and DC politely told Robinson to quit the book. When Robinson first started out on Starman, his goal was to reach #100 issues and to then see where to go from there. Both DC and Robinson believed that they had a book on their hands that would be a sales grabber for years to come. But as the book was being printed after the Nash storyarc wrapped up (where she smoked the Justice League Europe) it began to slide in sales. It was a slow slide but it worried DC at first but they felt that Robinson could fix the sales and the book return to selling more issues.

 

The sales did not improve and DC began to let Robinson know that if the sales did not improve and stop falling that the book would be cancelled at their discretion. Robinson agreed to the terms DC placed on the book and the first move that DC took was to make a connection of Starman to Kingdom Come. In 1996, Kingdom Come was a monster hit for DC and they felt the best way for the sales on the book to improve were to have Starman have some sort of connection with the book. Robinson worked this idea out into issue #50 of the series which was not part of his original plan for the book.

 

The sales for issue #50 showed no signs of improvement or change for that matter and DC decided to make a final call on the book. Management told Robinson that he could wrap up the series at his own discretion due to the hit book he gave them but to "do it soon" so the loss of money would stop falling.

 

Robinson continued on with his own plan for the book, albeit shortened, and finally ended the series at issue #80 after Robinson had been getting some heat from management to end the book.

 

Considering DC's past record with creators in cases like these, Robinson was almost given carte blanche over the book and was given more chances than most creators in his situation.