Rising Stars
Written by J. Michael Straczynski, Art by Christian Zanier and Ken Lashley

You just have to admire J. Michael Straczynski's ability to switch gears. Rising Stars, which started as a murder mystery, turned into a political conspiracy, then a war story, again develops into something very different in the last bunch of four issues, which marks half of the way for the series (it is supposed to contain 24 issues). Of course, when you change the kind of story you tell every 4 issues or so, you run the risk of going the wrong way (as issues #6-#8 have painfully demonstrated), but here it works fine... for the most part.

Reminder: when we last left the Rising Stars universe, a small group of "specials" was trying to frame the others for attempting to overthrow the government. This resulted in a small war between the specials and the army, which in turn resulted in a critical mass of energy, enhancing the powers of all the surviving specials to an extraordinary level. Flash forward ten years later: most of those specials are running away from the law, very powerful, very pissed, with most of the ordinary citizens being very, very afraid of them. Comparisons to The X-Men are inevitable, but loyal Babylon 5 fans will easily make the connection to the Telepath crisis in the show.

Almost all of issue #9 is written as an issue of "Mediaweek" dated July 2012, titled "Ten Years After". It contains features, articles and interviews that give background details on what happened since the last story-arc. I agree that it's a somewhat lame way to give away info, and that it sometimes goes over the top (although I did like the way Straczynski got his revenge on the TNT network, who canceled Crusade) and I'm sure some cynics would say that it's not even comics. Which is correct. But so what? I liked it. Straczynski proves here that, whatever problems he may have with dialogue or characters, there's no one that tops him when it comes to creating a futuristic world (especially the post-apocalyptic anti-utopian kind). The issue ends with a chance for the specials to redeem themselves: shortly after the war, an insane special named Stephanie Chase took over (along with some other militant specials) the city of Chicago, and has been holding all of its citizens as hostages. The rest of the outcast specials are promised a legitimacy if they'll free the city. While at first reluctant, The Poet, the (anti) hero of the series who was the leader of the framed specials ten years ago, finally agrees to take this chance and lead them again.

And then all hell breaks loose. In issues #10-#11, they must wander in the streets of Chicago with the help of another special they don't trust. Chase discovers the specials' plan of attack and sets a trap for them. And one of them falls quite nicely into this trap.

Summarizing these two wonderful issues with these two short sentences is unfair, but saying anything else about them is saying too much. Not that anyone who read the previous issues will have a very hard time figuring out how things will develop, but still, I think readers need to discover it themselves. Let's just say that Straczynski pulled here what is probably considered the cheapest plot-twist imaginable, and he still made it work. No small thanks to Brett Evans dark and beautiful coloring.

With issue #12, we say goodbye to Christian Zanier's sometimes brilliant but most of the time dull pencils, and hello to new artist Ken Lashley who's doing a much better job. Unfortunately, while the art has improved, writing suddenly took a turn for the worse. Obviously the result of trying to squeeze too much into one issue, #12 is confused, with too much going on and important character-development lost in the mayhem, and what's possibly the sorriest excuse for a cliff-hanger seen in a long time. It would have been much better if Straczynski had taken his time to spread things across more issues.

Still, this bunch of issues is by far the best. If things keep up like this, we have another 12 great issues to look for. And I must say I can't wait.

-- Raz Greenberg

Rising Stars, published by Top Cow Comics, is currently available at comic retailers.

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