Where Did This Come From? This series testifies to both the opportunities and pitfalls of multimedia art. It began in the late 1970s as a sci-fi stage play by actor/writer Elaine Lee, her sister Susan Norfleet Lee, their colleague Dale Place, and the artist/designers Michael W. Kaluta and Charles Vess. Starstruck takes adventurers Galatia 9, Brucilla, and Erotica Anne Droid through a madcap space opera with more space battles and backstory of dueling Dune-like dynasties than they could afford actually to show on stage.





The publication history of Starstruck is extremely convoluted. Kaluta produced a set of comic book prequel character vignettes which were serialized first in the Spanish magazine Ilustracion Comix, then again in Heavy Metal magazine, then collected in 1984 by Marvel Comics as the 72 page Starstruck: The Luckless, the Abandoned, and the Forsaked (sic). This led to a Starstruck series for Epic Comics (six issues of 32 pages each) in 1985-6 as well as two stories about young Brucilla in The Rocketeer Adventure Magazine in 1987-88.

Then in 1990 Dark Horse Comics began re-publishing the whole as “Starstruck: The Expanding Universe,” 48 page black & white issues drawing on the Heavy Metal pages and the first issue of the Epic run, with much added material, but only four of the intended twelve issues were published before cancellation struck again when Kaluta moved on to other work.

Finally in 2009, IDW published the Dark Horse project from the beginning as a thirteen issue series, this time in color (courtesy of the amazing Lee Moyer), with back-up stories, glossary, and other ancillary material. IDW collected that series as a trade volume in hardback (2011) and softback (2012), and that’s what I have.

What’s in this trade volume exactly? The first 208 pages collect all the main narrative material available through the first Epic issue. The main characters finally meet around page 150, and this section concludes at a lull in the story with “to be continued…” Then follow 28 pages of exposition, mostly in the form of a glossary explaining the planets, the characters, and other elements of the setting. The third section, 82 pages long, comprises a set of back-up stories about the misadventures of young Brucilla as a member of the Galactic Girl Guides, a cookie-selling, scheme-hatching satire that asks, "What if Donald Duck's nephews were Girl Scouts?" 42 pages of author background and promotional material wrap things up.



What’s good about it? Kaluta does a delightful job on B&W art, with detailed characters, individualized faces, and fully rendered backgrounds in the spirit of Moebius and his compatriots. Lee Moyer wins the MVP award; this is one of the most beautifully colored comic books I’ve seen. Deep green, purple, and orange form the basis of his jewel-toned palette.





The protagonists are appealing as well, plucky women pressing against adversity in a galaxy that seems intent on demolishing them through a combination of malice, carelessness, and stupidity.





Nitpick… Galatia 9’s ponytail seems to be defying gravity rather than hanging vertically as she tosses back her drink in the panel above. She must use a lot of hairspray!

What’s bad? The plotting is, to put it mildly, hopeless as a conventional narrative. Now, there are reasons for this, stemming from its origin as (1) a companion piece to a play rather than the actual body of a story, and (2) a hodgepodge created by passing through various publishers with different audiences and expectations. The first 208 page section is not a coherent narrative at all, but rather a collection of vignettes short and long in which a wide variety of characters who already know the story talk about pieces of it naturalistically, without thought balloons or explanatory captions, so that readers have no point of entrance or clear protagonist with clear motivations. I do believe there’s a story in there, but the best way to get it will involve heavy reliance on the expositional glossary. So either read that first, or else turn to it immediately as soon as any character is named, and you’ll have a more satisfactory first read than I did.



What’s pretty good? The plotting of the third section, the adventures of the Galactic Girl Guides, is much better. The cast is manageable, mainly just Brucilla and her two best friends (in the slapstick spirit of Huey, Dewey, and Louie) navigating a host of challenges from “raid from the boys’ camp” to “stuck in orbit around the moon.” Adult Brucilla acts as narrator, providing the crucial information missing from the first section. Perhaps Lee improved in her understanding of the needs of the audience as well, in these later stories. However, they also lack Moyer’s work as colorist, which means that the color work is just “as good as the typical comic book with excellent Kaluta art” rather than “best in show.”



What’s interesting? Lots of 70s/80s puns. “Rootersnoos” (Reuters News) is a galactic CNN. There’s a trip to “Planet Mawkeezmow” (machismo) in the “XY Chromo Zone.” One troll-like race’s speech is rendered so phonetically that you’ll have to say it aloud to understand. Galatia 9 encounters God in the form of three characters who finish each other’s sentences and speak in three different colors of text, in a conversation which expects familiarity with certain linguistic/theological concerns involving the Hebrew and Greek words for “spirit.”



Bottom Line: The story is a lot of work to suss out and isn’t really amazing once you know it. If you’re telling a story in which many of the characters are clones, robot duplicates, or identical twins of other characters, many of whom operate under multiple names, you’re going to have to take more pains with narrative clarity than we get here. But the art is amazing. Spend some time on each page to soak in the work of the masters Kaluta and Moyer.

But wait! There’s more! Five issues of the Epic run still go uncollected here. Some of that material was re-used in much-expanded form as the 176 page graphic novel Starstruck: Old Proldiers Never Die (2017), which I will cover next time. That material also does a much better job of contextualizing what this original series was supposed to have been about in the first place.