Peter Snejbjerg came on with issue #50, and remained the series artist until its conclusion in issue #80 (ignoring the "resurrected" issue #81 from the Blackest Night event). At that point, Robinson was already a couple of issues into the "Stars My Destination" arc, aka the story where Jack goes into space looking for his new girlfriend's missing brother, the previous, bemulleted Starman.
I've heard the second half of Starman is generally considered the weaker half, with the space arc a prime culprit. And I can see it. Robinson spent the first four year building up Opal City as a major part of the book, then sends the book into space for a year, because he seems bound and determined to tie every star-themed character into the Starman legacy. So they get diverted into the 30th Century, so we can learn the Legion of Super-Heroes' Star Boy is going to become Star Man, and eventually return to the 21st Century under a different name.
Robinson tries to work this stuff into the build-up for the big "Grand Guignol" arc, having Jack help out Adam Strange on Rann, so that Adam will try to repay the favor later, but it does feel like an overlong digression. To say nothing of the detour into Krypton's past to meet Teen Rebel Jor-El..
That said, I do like Grand Guignol (minus the way things went with Nash, the original Mist's daughter.) I can appreciate Robinson trying to bring everything he'd spent 60 issues setting up together - all the foes, the Shade's backstory, the ghost of Jon Valor, on and on - into one big throwdown for the fate of Opal City's present and future. He wanted to do a big story, and I feel like he pulled it off. Made us care about the characters and the stakes enough to justify all the set up and foreshadowing.
Snejbjerg's version of Jack Knight is cleaner, better put-together. He smooths out a lot of the lines and wrinkles, makes the hair less of a rat's nest. Jack still dresses mostly the same, the aviator goggles and the leather jacket, but it doesn't look like he's slept in them for two weeks straight. Jack also lost the tattoos as a result of death by disintegration, followed by resurrection via Rannian science. I don't remember the dying having that much in the way of ramifications for Jack long-term, so I wonder if Snejbjerg just didn't want to have to draw the tats any time Jack was shirtless or in short sleeves.
The book concludes with a few last loose ends, a handful of mysteries Robinson hadn't revealed the solutions to yet. More important, it ends with Jack retiring from the role as Starman, passing the cosmic rod on to Courtney Whitmore, who would take on the name Stargirl. She's kept the title ever since, and Jack's stayed retired ever since. Even the Blackest Night tie-in issue was about The Shade and Hope O'Dare, nary a Jack to be found.
It's perhaps not so surprising in some sense. Jack always insisted he wasn't the kind of hero who was going to patrol. Just a guy who would step up when Opal needed him. And the bargain he made with his father was for Ted to continue exploring ways to use stellar energy to help people outside superheroics. Well, Opal has a new bunch of protectors by the end of the book, and Ted's not going to be doing any further research. It is surprising in that I can't believe someone didn't drag Jack back out in one of the half-dozen revamps DC's done in the last 15 years.
Sometimes the characters get left to their happy endings.
No comments:
Post a Comment