Every once in a while, we at YDRC take a look at James Robinson’s essential Starman series from 1994. There will be deep spoilers for the issues covered, which will be listed near the front of the article. If you do not desire to be spoiled for this wonderful comic, we recommend steering away or reading those issues first before coming back.

This chapter will be covering Starman issues 4-6, a trio of mostly unconnected issues.

If you would like to begin reading from the start, click here to open Table of Contents.

Jack Knight has been Starman for four months, at least according to the publication of comics. Aside from avenging his brother’s death and saving his hometown Opal City from an old foe, it’s been almost business as normal. Jack has gone back to wheeling and dealing with various collectors around Opal City, and rebuilding his collection in the wake of losing his shop. However, remarkably strange things are afoot.

A Day in the Opal can almost be considered a breather issue. After taking the reader on an action-adventure roller-coaster, James Robinson has chosen to lean back on the throttle and engage in a little character work and world-building. For a world crammed full of superheroes, magic, and immortals, a lot of comics focus purely on either directly-important backstory or the present here and now. Instead, Robinson doesn’t shy away from taking a brief diversion here or there.

Back in 1931, a man shows up on the beaches of Hawaii. His story is told with narration and panels of art both beautiful and disturbing. His name was Harry Ajax, and his talents for art far surpassed anyone else. He claimed he was also one of the rare people with mystical abilities, and by 1933 said that he would take his newfound craft of Hawaiian shirts and… make a gateway into heaven.

After completing his shirt, he vanishes from the Earth.

Off in Switzerland, an old and very rich man has made it his life’s work of tracking down this shirt. He’s finally gotten a lead, and sends a mercenary named Sands go to after it. In Opal City.

Cutting to Opal itself, the story tells another interlude. Rachel Foster has just lost the love of her life, Mae. She left, and Rachel has been wandering the streets of Opal to find herself. What she finds instead, is a poster on a wall in an alleyway.

Which comes to life and devours her. A wizened old man walks by, peels off the poster, and leaves. While this is certainly a weird interlude, this is also Robinson setting things up for something a few years down the line. Slow burn reveals like this don’t exist much these days, and seeing it in a comic from the 1990s is a delight.

Jack is having a relaxing day for once, and his time spent with Ted Knight has resulted in a new design for the Cosmic Rod. Jack once more seems to be embracing his destiny as a hero, as he’s admitting that he helped design this Cosmic Rod. As he muses about taking control of his own destiny as much as possible, darkness floods over a wall in Jack’s home. From the inky blackness steps The Shade, paying Jack a social call.

While Jack is taken aback, and does threaten the Shade’s life for a second, he agrees to sit and chat with the old villain. In fact, the Shade has an interesting question to ask of Jack.

Jack hems and haws before admitting he does, but not about the person the Shade is looking for. Instead, the Shade comments that he feels Jack shares a quality needed to keep this city safe with that person from the 1900s he’s looking for. However, with no connection there, the Shade feels that Jack needs to know more about the history of Opal and the world than he currently does, and leaves behind the first volume of his journal.

This has never been hinted at before in any of the Shade’s Silver or Golden Age appearances, and it’s another retcon from James Robinson that does wonders for fleshing out what used to be a one-dimensional character. Indeed, while Jack Knight is the main character of Starman, the Shade is easily the secondary main character. What Robinson is going to do very soon is have entire issues dedicated to the past of the Shade, along with a 4-part miniseries, and other adventures dedicated to fleshing out this morally ambiguous character. The fact that Jack is willing to even talk with the Shade, much less read the journal entries of someone who has been such a villain in the past, is actually a nice change of pace from immediately leaping to fisticuffs as well.

As if to prove he means well, the Shade even leaves Jack the memorial plaque from his mother’s destroyed wing of the art museum as a parting gift.

Finally, our introductory segment and Jack meet, as the mercenary Sands shows up in Jack’s storage unit, wielding an uzi, and a standoff happens. He tells Jack exactly why he’s here: for a specific Hawaiian shirt.The one that, as mentioned before, happens to hold a gateway to heaven. Jack is shocked, but doesn’t actually want the shirt. Again, a key difference between Jack and most heroes is that he’s willing to give up the shirt.

And that’s that. Sands pays for the shirt and leaves.Jack takes the time to talk about his weird day with his dad Ted, and one of the recurring themes for Starman is mentioned offhand by Ted himself.

Unlike the previous storyline, Jack literally did nothing to join the weirdness. Instead, it approached him and became part of his life until it was too late for him to stop the weird from happening. While future books would not keep this pattern up, it is a perfect example of how Jack is different from other heroes at the time, and how James Robinson is utterly content to parody that with slight jabs at Jack.

And for those wondering, Sands delivers the shirt to the old man in Switzerland. Within a few minutes, the old man is gone. There is no trace of him, and all that remains is the shirt.

Issue 5 of Starman is the first of a yearly trend within the comic. Jack finds himself in the middle of a graveyard at night, but that’s not the strange thing. The entire comic is actually in black and white, with some interesting panel choices to show the change of time.

As Jack wanders through the graveyard, however, someone finally calls out to him. Someone who, unlike the entire rest of the comic, is in vibrant and bright red and greens. 

It’s David Knight, Jack’s late elder brother. David plays mystery man, refusing to answer any of Jack’s questions as to what’s going on. Instead, David leaps onto Jack and punches him. The two engage in an all-out brawl, much like only brothers can do, with familiar taunts and old grudges.

However, the fight comes to a stop when both realize how much of a mess the two of them have made of the graveyard. There is a sheepish excuse made from both about how it wasn’t their fault, before the two of them reluctantly agree that they share blame and begin to work at repairing the landscape of this twisted land. And here is where Robinson works his magic.

While the comic remains in greyscale aside from David in color, the story gains a depth of character as David Knight is given more character in a few scant pages being dead than he’s had in his five years of existing as a living being. As if dying has allowed him to bypass all of his hang-ups, his anger, and his grudges, David admits that he was just jealous of Jack most of his life. While David clung to his father’s identity like a life raft, Jack struck out on his own as a person. Learning Japanese to figure out a catalogue of Levi jeans. Ignoring any of his brother’s ribbing as he tried to do his own thing. It’s funny, it’s amusing, and it adds history to David and Jack without feeling like an “as you know” that so many writers fall into.

Finally, David apologizes. That he wishes he’d seen how cool his brother was, when he was alive. As the sun starts to rise on the graveyard, spreading color into the scene, David flies off as Starman, promising to see him at the same time next year.

Talking with David would become a regular feature of Starman, happening almost once a year throughout the run of the book. Even when the stories got crazy, Robinson found the time and place to slip in an issue for Jack and David to grow their relationship and repair what had been damaged in life. Those issues would also flesh out the world of the DC Universe in ways that very few comics have ever tried. But we’ll get to those issues in time.

Another regular feature of Robinson’s time on Starman was a series of stories under the title of Times Past. These issues acted as further breather issues that allowed for fleshing out of the timeline of the DC Universe, using important characters or teasing readers with a bigger story that would show up later. These issues would also be experimental, often with a different art crew, or a framing device in the issue.

Jack has finally decided to crack open one of The Shade’s journals, and is reading one of the earliest adventures related to the readers of DC Comics involving “modern” characters. Set in 1882, the Shade’s journal relates the time he met Oscar Wilde, at least the first time Oscar himself had been to Opal City. However, as they talk, a young boy approaches the Shade for assistance. As it turns out, while the Shade would play the villain in the 1940s and 1950s, he had actually played a troubleshooter, a man who would perform odd jobs for a price.

With just this little twist on the Shade’s character, Robinson has added quite a lot of proverbial flesh to the bones that existed for the villain in the Golden Age of comics. As the Shade is possibly immortal, the idea of growing bored with life and changing one’s role is an easy one to assume, and it works fantastically here. As you can see as well, the art is very different from the previous issues. While Wade Von Grawbadger would return for the very next issue, the change is a delight. The rougher style on the pencils from everyone involved, and the sketchier inks from Kristiansen, really provide the feeling of a different world from the modern comics of the day. A simpler time, and a more dangerous time as well. The entire issue avoids the noir feel of the previous issues, but instead provides an adventure feel not unlike the early issues of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy.

The Shade has been asked to investigate a local performance troupe. The boy’s sister has become taken with their hypnotist, and he with her money, which is a not insubstantial fund. The Shade asks that he simply leave town, and leave her as well. When he refuses, and thugs enter the room, the Shade holds no quarter.

This comic is utterly gorgeous, and I feel like some of these pages should be framed on the wall. The Shade’s powers have been seen before in the Golden Age, Silver Age, and even earlier issues of Starman. However, it has never been this artistic, this raw and frightening. The Shade shows no such sign of the mercy he had in Sins of the Father, slaughtering all of the thugs in comics-code approved off-panel ways.

The Shade wipes out the entire troupe across the issue, and simply describing the ensuing sword fight, or the way his tendrils of shadow-beasts annihilate axemen does not do it justice. If you read one issue from this trio, or recommend a back-issue to a friend trying to stave off Covid-based cabin fever, this is that comic.

Finally, the story cuts back to Oscar Wilde, and the Shade. He is with his one reward beyond the money, a simple rose… although he did also ask for ten percent of their total funds. As Wilde and the Shade continue to eat, the Shade happens to ask about the other man who happened to have a prolonged life that he’d run into.

And there, the entry abruptly ends, a page torn from the journal. Jack wonders why… but figures it’s probably for the best that he doesn’t know.

These three issues are all about world building, setting up the history of the Shade, establishing the kind of character Jack is, and even allowing some hints at future plot threads to tease at readers. If the first story of Starman was about hooking the reader, these three issues ease the hook out of the reader’s mouth while giving them several more hooks to keep them interested. It’s devious, clever, and downright effective.

Not all superhero comics need to be about earth-shattering events. And sometimes it’s just a delight to slow down and hear about how Jack bundled up one cold winter night to read about the Shade and Oscar Wilde.