Dreadstar and Company #1
“Fabulous first issue!” the cover cries, which is as good a place as any to start this blog's new "First Issue on the First" feature. As you'd expect, the plan is to review the first issue of a comic on the first of each month. Note that this is first issues, not first appearances, because this is most definitely not the first appearance of Vanth Dreadstar, only the first issue of this space-opera series from Epic Comics. The story and art is by one of my longtime favorites, Jim Starlin. I saw Dreadstar comics (the incarnation published by First Comics) on the spinner rack at ye olde Magic Mart and passed on them until reading Marvel’s Warlock. The quality of his work on Warlock is what got me into Starlin’s work.
Dreadstar is Starlin’s best-known creator-owned property and evolved out of The Metamorphosis Odyssey. As such, it has a lot of the hallmarks one would expect of Starlin’s cosmic stuff: a Thanos-looking guy, a Magus-looking guy, a Pip the Troll-looking guy. Much as I love Starlin, after a certain point he uses a lot of the same faces and design components over and over. He also explores a lot of the same central themes over and over as well, but this is more forgivable because he does it pretty well: life versus death, freedom versus oppression by religious dictatorship, free will versus predestination, and so on. Starlin’s bread and butter has always been cosmic super-heroics.
While not as trippy or experimental as his legendary run on Adam Warlock, Dreadstar is still cool on its own. This issue is the start of a very respectable, very readable run. It reads to me as a testing ground for the material he produced for all the Infinity spin offs at Marvel. The omnipresence of the Lord High Papal (the albino Thanos-looking guy) presages Starlin’s later return to Thanos and that character’s omnipresence in the 90s-and-beyond Marvel universe. Syzygy Darklock, a zombified sorcerer and apostate priest from the Papal’s church, was a favorite secondary character, and even puts me in mind of Adam Warlock’s demeanor post-resurrection.
Dreadstar and Company definitely emphasizes the “and Company” part of the equation. It is much more of a team book than any of the epic Warlock and Thanos stuff. Those guys just don’t leave a lot of air in the room for other characters. The "and Company" is a crew of fellow rebels supporting Dreadstar’s vendetta against both the Instrumentality and the other evil empire dominating the galaxy, the Monarchy. Syzygy the sorcerer, Oedi the cat-like humanoid, Willow the blind telepath, and Skeevo the Pip the Troll-looking guy were the primary supporting cast. Which one is the traitor? Surely not the newest addition to the team!
A few issues of this series (along with some of Starlin’s Adam Warlock) were in the legendary big black trashbag of comics that pretty much confirmed me as a comics-hoarder. A decade or so later, I picked up the rest of the Epic run (and it is a pretty epic run) at the now defunct Dragon’s Tale comics in Neptune Beach. Here and there I will be reviewing some of those first issues I read or other stand out moments from the series. I'm not sure what the status is of this being in print, but if you can find these issues definitely check them out! On a final note, the title of this review should be sung to the tune of the song "Bad Company" by the band Bad Company.
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