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.