Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: 1984, dc thomson, grant morrison, STARBLAZER

DC Thomson Reprints Grant Morrison's Starblazer From 1984

DC Thomson have a second volume of Starblazer, including early work by Grant Morrison and Bryan Talbot, and an introduction by Paul Cornell.

Starblazer – Space Fiction Adventure in Pictures was a British small-format comics anthology in black and white published by DC Thomson from 1979 until 1990. DC Thomson recently put out a second volume of Starblazer, this time including early work by Grant Morrison and Bryan Talbot and an introduction by Paul Cornell.

Starblazer – Space Fiction Adventures in Pictures
STARBLAZER Volume 2 Interstellar Space Fiction Adventure in Pictures! Beaming down from outer space and into your hands is Starblazer Volume 2! This astronomical anthology collects two classic Starblazer issues from DC Thomson's extra-terrestrial archives: The Web of Arcon by Mike Knowles, illustrated by Carlos Pino and John Martin, and The Death Reaper by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Enrique Alcatena and Keith Robson. These two vintage issues from 1979 and 1984 have been blown up to full-graphic novel. Also included in this volume are an exclusive interview with legendary artist Carlos Pino (Commando, 2000 AD's Judge Dredd), cover gallery, and foreword by Doctor Who screenwriter and comic author Paul Cornell. The Web of Arcon – Reconnaissance ships patrolled the dark recesses of the Galaxy. As these ships were largely automatic, the crew spent long periods doing nothing. But on his first deep space trip, the newly commissioned Lieutenant Janus was about to encounter The Star Queen, a spaceship long thought lost and destroyed. Well, the truth about its fate was stranger – and more dangerous – than fiction! First published Starblazer #12, 1979. The Death Reaper – Mikal R. Kayn was a policeman. He was forcibly retired by the Republic of the United Worlds' Department of Justice, Star Cops, for methods to be found in no book… and a slight medical problem – he was all but blind. However, being medically blind didn't stop Kayn from becoming a Private Investigator, in fact, the Justice Department were delighted, because it got him off their backs. Well, almost… on March 23, 2284, Kayn's old partner, Affa, still a Galactic Policeman, was in the middle of an investigation and he needed Kayn's help! First published Starblazer #141, 1984. The volume is once again capped off with an interstellar cover by Neil Roberts (2000 AD, Warhammer, Commando).

And courtesy of Amazon, we have that introduction by Paul Cornell,

"This volume's stories offer a stark contrast in styles, and neatly show the way new influences continually arrived to reinvigorate Starblazer.

"The Web of Arcon from #12 (November 1979) is a traditional post-Star Wars space opera, even harking back as far as Dan Dare, in which cigar-smoking space pirate captains exclaim 'suffering Saturn!' and 'by the jumping jetfish of Zama!' and pass through asteroid storms while using highly generic laser pistols. deflector shields and warp drives. Men are men and women are entirely absent.

"The spaceship design is pretty traditional too, with a patrol ship steering mightily close to looking like an Imperial Star Destroyer and the Cam-XS resembling the Dalek flying saucer from Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. Blake's 7s note of cynicism has only slightly influenced this mode of British S.F. comics by this point, allowing us to only possibly think perhaps the pirate captain might have a point about the square-jawed and tellingly-named 'Terran Confederation.

"There's a lot of pleasure to be found in the tightly-plotted script by veteran comics and screenwriter Mike Knowles, in which every action has a payoff, and the diversion of the middle act turns out to have a nice thematic thump to it. Is it cheating to show the visuals of a tale our hero is spinning that we know to be a lie? Well, there's also high craft to be found in creating enough incident to fill the page count.

"Carlos (Ro-Busters) Pine's artwork occasionally hints at the sly comedy of which he's so capable, notably in the depiction of the wonderfully bug-eyed Kaleck, who looks exquisitely downtrodden when landing in a plate of food thanks to the captain's table-thumping. Staff artist John Martin provides a cover that's more Valiant than 2000 AD to round off this solid, well-told story.

"'The Death Reaper from #127 (August 1984) is an entirely different matter, showcasing the much wider influences that had come pounding into pop culture S.F. in those five years and specifically the emerging talent of a future comics writing superstar, Grant Morrison. This is a much stranger universe, packed with excellently diverse aliens that wouldn't look out of place in Metal hurlant by French artist Moebius, from globular multi-peds to a one-page cameo from a space rhino who merits his own lettering font. If this early script from Morrison stays within the traditions of detective noir, the hero, Mikal R Kayn has an intriguingly different eye condition that hints at the writer's future creations, and lines like 'running a warp engine isn't cheap these days' indicate a certain satirical distance from the generic.

"There are also bigger S.F. concepts like the Dyson Sphere of Prometheus, making this a story that couldn't have happened on the high seas. The offhand plundering of so many different mythologies for placenames does ground us in the generic, however, and 'adamtium', 'wendigo' and 'roro' show Morrison has their head in Chris Claremont's X-Men, but the use of A.U.'s as units of time is so specifically wrong in the same way Star Was uses 'parsec' that it could well be deliberate. The ending is perhaps a tithe hand-wavey. but all in all there's clearly big stuff informing every angle of this piece, rubbing up against the need for it to be tightly-plotted and over-stuffing it with worldbuilding.

"Argentinian artist Enrique Alcatena (Predator vs. Judge Dredd) provides a stunning number of original designs, many shown-off in delightful full-page spreads, from the decayed gothic space castle of Spaceport Ithaca East to the dead city of Valhalla Nova, to Cinnibar's sled. Alcatena's influences are thoroughly digested, but clearly include Men's H.R. Giger (the city's interior), 2000 AD's Kevin O'Neill (that multiharvester, both in the interiors and on the cover by Keith Robson, looks like an alternate take on Re-Buster's Mek-Ouake) and most strikingly Bryan Talbot who at that point had only just come to mainstream notice with his Nemesis the Warlock Clnnibar's DNA surely contains some of Talbot's version of underground Russian comics character Octobriana. It's hard to say how much of this might be due to Morrison's habit of designing characters for the artist and how much is Alcatena himself, but the execution is very much the equal of the design. The oddest thing about this story, though, is perhaps the title. Didn't 'The Reaper' sound deadly enough?

"The original issues both had charming back-page articles about real-world spaceflight, a connection that felt obvious in 1979, but had started to wobble by 1984. To read these stories now is to see the development of British pop culture S.F. in microcosm, and above all to marvel at such big talents creating epics in such small digests. Starblazer may have reflected the light from a whole galaxy of influences, but it also blazed a trail of its own."

A first volume was published by DC Thomson back in 2019, with the previous Mikal R Kayn story Operation Overkill by Grant Morrison and Enrique Alcatena on the cover.

Starblazer: Space Fiction Adventures in Pictures: 1
Out of this world space fiction adventure in pictures. An interstellar title not seen in almost three decades Starblazer returns in DC Thomson's latest graphic novel. Collating two classic issues from the archives and blowing them up to full graphic novel size with a brand new wraparound cover, this is something no Sci Fi fan or British comic collector can do without! OPERATION OVERKILL War had ravaged the galaxy for centuries, and many worlds had been destroyed. Gradually the planets sought truces as their titanic struggle diminished the population. At the final meeting where the galactic truce was signed, all the remaining weapons were shipped to a remote planet and dumped, to be used nevermore. But one man saw this arsenal as a means of dominating the universe, and so he set in motion Operation Overkill.

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