FSC: STARSLAYER #2

In 1982, I was a huge fan of Pacific Comics, and really all of the new companies that had begun to spring up in the developing Direct Sales marketplace. These new companies and their assorted offerings excited me with the possibilities. I truly felt that I might be on the ground floor of some future Marvel, having come to that outfit far too late to have been there at its formative days. I’d imagine that readers of a later generation felt the same way about the initial Image books, to say nothing of Valiant and Dark Horse and all of the other new companies of the 1990s. But something new and different was definitely what I was intrigued by at this time, and so Pacific Comics and its growing output was like catnip to me.

So I bought STARSLAYER right from the first issue, though this is #2 that we’re going to be looking at for relatively obvious reasons. And the ironic thing about it is that I wasn’t especially a fan of its creator, Mike Grell. I knew Grell from is assorted DC work, most notably on LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. I was also familiar with his popular and long-running series WARLORD. But I never so much as sampled WARLORD–it seemed like it was a barbarian comic book and what I wanted from my comics was always super heroes, so I just didn’t have an interest. So picking up STARSLAYER #2 was driven by a combination of really liking the idea of a new third company and wanting to be there at the ground floor (and not wanting to see early copies listing for exorbitant prices in a couple of years and remembering when I could have gotten them for cover price.)

The premise of STARSLAYER was an inversion of Grell’s earlier series WARLORD: in that title, a modern day soldier finds himself in a strange sword-and-sorcery realm secreted at the center of the Earth and becomes a heroic fighter. In STARSLAYER, the lead character, Torin Mac Quillon, is pulled from the distant past at the moment of his death into the far future, a world that needs a heroic champion of its own of the sort that centuries of civilization have bred out of the men of that era. Torin awakens in this issue in this future time and is schooled by Tamara, the woman who has drawn him here, as to what the situation is in this tomorrow time and what they need him to do.

As an aid to his understanding, Tamara provides Torin with a high-tech headband that not only restores the sight of his lost eye, but which also pairs him up symbiotically with SAM, a Simbionic Android Mindlink–essentially a robotic monkey–which can feed him information and analysis about the world he now finds himself in. He’s also kitted out with futuristic weapons, a sword and a firearm, as well as a full costume–only some of which he prefers to wear initially. The civilization of the future needs Torin to seek out and reunite a series of amulets, each of which was given to the leader of the colonization efforts across the solar system. Together, the amulets can unlock a power source great enough to defend the Earth from the transmogrified settlers of the outer planets, who have turned against the Earth government. It’s a relatively simple quest plot: gather up the macguffins and save the day.

It’s also pirate adventure in space, something that I could wrap my head around a lot more easily, somehow, than barbarians at the Earth’s core. The lettering in this story was often shaky and the coloring was trying for a more fully-realized effect than the usual four-color separations that were then available. But the kinks hadn’t been worked out yet, and so the presentation is a big, uh, sloppy-looking. I had no idea at the time that STARSLAYER had been developed as a property for DC but that it was spiked by the DC Implosion and that therefore Grell took it to Pacific where he could retain ownership and rights to it. It wasn’t a polished presentation at Pacific, but there was something about it that I liked nonetheless. so not a big favorite or anything, but at least a title that I’d continue to follow. And one of the reasons for continuing to pay attention to STARSLAYER premiered on the following page.

I had no idea who Dave Stevens was. I doubt than many readers did, apart from maybe a few who’d met him at the San Diego Comic Con over the years or knew him from his work in film. But his back-up series The Rocketeer caught people’s attention immediately with this initial offering. As I understand things, with Grell unable or unwilling to fill up the entirety of this issue and future ones, Pacific needed filler, and so they turned to Stevens to craft something, anything, for them to fill the space. Dave took inspiration from a bunch of the things he loved, pulp adventure and movie serials and the verve of the 1930s and came up with the story of Cliff Secord, a hard-luck aviator who stumbles into possession of an advanced rocket pack which enables him to fly without a plane.

Much of what would make the strip noteworthy–including the first appearance of Betty page within its pages–wouldn’t happen for another issue or two. But even here, limited to a mere six pages in which he races through his character’s origin in almost shorthand, Stevens expert draftsmanship and talent for caricature and cartooning as well as dramatics comes through meaningfully. The Rocketeer was instantly a strip readers were paying attention to. The Rocketeer helmet is possibly the greatest full-face character design since Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man, and gave the character an instant recognition and appeal.

It’s great stuff, and has been much-reprinted over the years, even given that Stevens only managed to produce two extended stories for the character (with a bunch of help from others–Stevens was meticulous with his artwork, which made him slow.) Moreso than the interior pages, this back cover image really summed up the flavor of the series and hinted towards the potential of it as a serial. I know that I was instantly hooked by it, and only got more so as further installments unfolded. It was finding strips such as this one that was the whole reason I was so enamored of all of the new companies that were springing up–there was a lot of irredeemable crap as well, and material that was no better or really different than the mainstream. But every once in a while, you’d stumble across a gem such as The Rocketeer.