The Savage Strength of Starstorm #2 // Review
A meteor hit not far from Kirby High School. Now, there are a lot of people in the hospital and a lot of other people who are dead. Grant feels a little responsible. Jen thinks it’s survivor’s guilt, but it’s something more than that as Grant is dealing with the new powers he has in The Savage Strength of Starstorm #2. Writer/artist Drew Craig continues a throwback teen superhero story in the mold of so many others that have populated comic books over the course of the 20th century. Color hits the page courtesy of Jason Finestone, who also does the lettering.
Angela Razini is at the funeral. She’s there with a massive bodyguard. Her uncle is Don Razini. Yeah: THAT Don Razini. The one who is the godfather of the Techno Mafia. The one who had Master Venom assassinated in jail. Angela Razini’s mom was his half-sister, who was in a relationship with Thunder Jack of the Omega Squadron. Angela would leave, but she’s still a minor, which hasn’t stopped her from training with the Assassin’s Guild. She was also the lead singer of the Outcasts until her uncle put a stop to it. It’s a lot to take in. Grant needs a flight to clear his head.
It should be pointed out that all but the last two sentences of the above paragraph is background exposition that makes its debut in the first two pages of the second issue. Craig is laying out a hell of a lot of backstory and just...dumping it unceremoniously on the first couple of pages of the second issue, which feels more than a little bit awkward. A comical amount of the story of the first couple of issues is just delivered as exposition as people stand and fly around. Nearly every character on the page has a complicated inner life, but there isn’t a whole heck of a lot of activity going on until the zombies show up on Page 13. And then it’s...all action: stiff and awkward but weirdly appealing action.
As awkward as the storytelling can feel, the visual world that Craig is delivering to the page actually looks pretty cool in its own way. There’s a crude inelegance to it, but it THRIVES on that lack of grace, delivering a heavily-inked reality to the page that seems a bit like a cross between Edward Gorey and Gary Chalk. Once the reader’s eyes get used to it, it can be absolutely breathtaking in its own way. Stiff and awkward, but with a persistence of style that openly embraces its own kind of beauty.
The actual design of Grant’s suit and the visual component of his powers are cool enough. At the heart of the comic, Grant actually seems like a pretty fun idea for a character. It kind of feels like the story for the comic book might have been cobbled together from Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Jim Shooter’s Star Brand and classic superhero teens like Spider-Man, but I mean...it all fits together well enough that Craig’s really got something interesting in Starstorm. It just feels weird watching the thing take its first couple of shambling steps in its first couple of issues.
