Charismagic #1 – Review

By: Vince Hernandez (writer), Khary Randolph (artist), Emilio Lopez (colorist)

The Story: The most evil and dangerous criminal magician is about to escape, and you know what that means?  Pulped apples!

The Review: What makes for a compelling first issue, one that will keep you invested to see how the first arc goes?  Well, pretty much the same things that make compelling second, third, and all issues that come after: engaging characters, appealing art, and fresh storylines.  The only real difference is you have to hit the ground running—you don’t have the luxury to offer a weak, or even a mediocre issue; the series’ livelihood is at stake.

Charismagic #1 establishes the right tone by clearly showing it knows what it wants to be and where it’s going.  Having spoken before on the importance of setting some ground rules for magic (however tenuous and breakable they may be), I’m glad they delve into some magical physics right from the get-go.  Even better, the way magic exists in this world ties into the threat to come, so from the beginning you know what’s at stake for the characters.

The cost is a long, doom-ridden, explanatory monologue, which is an old fictional tool, but one that really drains the pacing in comics.  Hector’s rambling warning tells straight out the danger ahead, but it also feels leaden and awkward, so it doesn’t all work.  When he tries to make a point by crushing that apple, it comes off unavoidably melodramatic.  But it gets the expository stuff out of the way pretty effectively, saving future issues from having to deal with it.  It’d have been nice to see how magic works prior to shaking things up, however.

What’s nice about Zatara-analogue Hank’s conversation with alcoholic, magic-knowledgeable Hector is the dialogue flows naturally, showing the characters already have some history in place.  Hernandez gets across the subtext of their interactions so well (helped by the occasional, revealing thought bubble) that you get a good sense of their relationships without having them spelled out to you.  Even the spats between Hank and girlfriend/showgirl Alle have layers—despite their irritation, they still possess a degree of caring and empathy for each other.

Starborn #4 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Khary Randolph (art), Mitch Gerads (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Bryce Carlson (editor)

The Story: Ben & Tara continue their escape from a whole host of bad-guy aliens as the initial arc of Starborn wraps up.

What’s Good: This is a pretty well executed story.  The themes are all things we’ve seen in fiction before, and (as they say) there are no “new” stories… But that doesn’t mean that creators can’t do a snappy job of giving us a fresh take on something we may have seen.  We wrap up the first story arc with this issue and it leaves us in a pretty compelling place:  Earthling Ben has been plucked from his mundane life where he writes mediocre science fiction as a hobby.  A few issues ago, he was attacked by aliens who seemed ripped from the pages of one of his novels but he was saved by the remnants of some galaxy spanning civilization.  The rescuers claim that Ben is the heir to the throne and that all the aliens trying to kill him are insurgents of some stripe or another.  Clearly, the mission will be to put “the rightful heir back on the throne”.  At his side, he’ll have the sexy/competent bodyguard, Tara, and the gruff/grim General Talon.  Color me intrigued, I’ll read this story going forward.

I’ve really enjoyed Khary Randolph’s art and Mitch Gerads colors in this series so far.  Randolph comes from the Humberto Ramos/Chris Bachalo style of character design that I love so much, and his work is especially strong in this issue.  It looked like he was using a heavier (but still varied) line to ink his work this time and I really liked the way this works with Gerad’s bold colors.  These characters are all expressive and alive and that’s what I want from sequential art.  If I just want a pretty picture, I can look at something in a museum.  If I’m reading a comic book, I want my characters to look vital.

Starborne #3 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Khary Randolph (art), Mitch Gerads (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Bryce Carlson (editor)

The Story: Benjamin & Tara continue trying to escape from the supposedly bad aliens that have descended upon Earth.

What’s Good: I said in some other recent review that strong art is vitally important to a comic book because it can help the comic remain interesting when the story hits a lull.  Stories are going to do that because that is simply how drama works and strong art is what keeps you from saying, “Boring!” and possibly dropping the series (especially in this brutal comic sales environment where there are too many series chase a shrinking pool of readers).

That’s a round about way of saying that the art is (again) a very strong point for Starborne #3.  In reviews of the first couple issues on this site I’ve spoken about the strength of Khary Randolph’s loose, cartoony style.  I think it is more effective for this series when the characters are running and jumping, but it still works pretty well even when the characters are standing around more (as they are in this issue).  So, let’s take a second to talk about Mitch Gerads’ colors.  Starborne is a cosmic book and coloring is very important to putting the reader in a “cosmic” frame of mind.  The action going on in a story like Starborne is a level of non-realism that is well beyond a typical superhero book, so normal color palates aren’t going to cut it and there are a few panels in this issue where Gerads just kinda cuts loose with a whole spectrum of colors to emphasize the fantastical nature of that element of the story.

Starborne #2 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Khary Randolph (art), Mitch Gerads (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters), Bryce Carlson (editor) & Stan Lee (Grand Poobah)

The Story: Benjamin Warner starts to lean WHY it seems that a science fiction story he has had in the back of his mind for years is coming to life around him.

What’s Good: This is a cool little story.  In the last issue we saw the first bits of Benjamin’s sci-fi story coming to life around him in a scene that was very reminiscent of The Matrix or Wanted or A New Hope where suddenly this nothing-special cubicle worker finds out that he may be a part of something bigger than he can imagine.  Only…he did imagine it, because the people and aliens showing up all around him are from a novel/story that he has been trying to write since he was a kid.  WTF is going on???

I really enjoy stories that just toss you into the action and then dole out little bits of background as the story unfolds.  So, here we learn that [SPOILER] Benjamin’s imaginary world is real and that he (and all the other humans) have somehow ended up on Earth (as in BSG) with a big memory wipe.  The reason he has been writing his story is that his memory blocks are falling apart.

Adding to the fun is his protector: Tara Takamoto.  Benjamin has had a crush on her his entire life and now we learn that she has been assigned by some secret society to guard him, so she has a vibe like the Fox in Wanted or 355 in Y the Last Man.

All of this action unfolds against what looks like a huge cosmic backdrop of warring alien races that seems yanked out of any number of space operas.  What is really neat about this issue is that although many (all?) of the plot elements borrow from other fictional works, the result is pretty slick.  It just goes to show that there aren’t really any new ideas, but you can certainly do an excellent job of putting a unique spin on stories we all know.  Not to mention that when a story reminds me of Wanted, The Matrix, Y the Last Man, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica that means I enjoyed the story.  This is really what Stan Lee does well: Take other folks’ concepts and polish/repackage the hell out of them to make a fun story.

Starborne #1 – Review

By: Chris Roberson (writer), Khary Randolph (art), Mitch Gerads (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Bryce Carlson (editor)

The Story: Is this man crazy, or is the novel he’s writing really coming to life around him?

What’s Good: This was a good first issue.  I’ll go ahead and spoil the basic premise because it is the most enticing aspect of the title so far.  After a really rough first couple of pages, you realize that those pages were actually from a novel being written by our protagonist, Benjamin.  Ben is a struggling author, stuck in a job he hates while he tries to write a space opera.  It turns out that he has had this story in his head since he was a small child and that his imagination was so intense that his parents actually thought he might be insane and took him to psychologists.  All seems well, but then his novel starts to come to life in a scene that reminded me of a cross between The Matrix and Wanted (the movie moreso than the comic).  All of this begs the question: Is he crazy or is this stuff really happening?