Rising Stars
Issues 1-8. Written by J. Michael Straczynski, artwork by Christian Zanier.

The first four issues of Rising Stars were, with the exception of the third's somewhat sketchy artwork, a pleasure from start to finish. Now the next four issues are out, and this bunch, I hate to say, didn't leave me with the same strong impression as the first one. They're very uneven.

A shame, really, because it starts on a very promising note. Issue #5 is, at the time of this writing, the best-written and best-drawn installment in the series. With a brilliant plot concerning two of the Specials -- one who can go into other people's minds, and another who can speak with the dead -- clever dialogues, Zanier's eerie vision of what it's like to travel inside people's consciousness and the "reflecting picture" conclusion (yeah, it's a gimmick, but a very nice one), I felt that Straczynski was finally at ease with the comic medium, believing (quite naively, as it turned out), that the following issues would be at least on the same level. There was one problem, however, that kept bothering me. Rising Stars started as a murder mystery. In Issue #5, we discovered the murderer's identity. So, where was the series heading after that?

Judging by #6, the answer is "Nowhere fast". The stunt Straczynski tries to pull here, now that we know who the "bad guys" are, is to let us see things from their point of view. It doesn't work because: a) we don't end up with any convincing motive of their actions, other than "because they're the bad guys and that's what they do"; b) At least one of those bad guys, in what can only be described as a slap in the face for loyal readers, acts completely out of the character we've come to know from earlier issue; and c) these are the most boring, one-dimensional bad guys you've ever seen in a comic-book series or anywhere else.

My overall feeling was that this issue couldn't have been written by the same Straczynski who gave us characters like Sinclair, Ivanova and Garibaldi. It must have been done by that other Straczynski, the evil Straczynski, who gave us characters like Lochley, Byron and Gideon. And whoever watched Babylon 5 knows that there's a huge difference between the two. To top it all off, Zanier's art, which finally started to make an impression on me in #5, returned to its annoying origins here. With characters who look far too similar, others who look like a caricature of themselves, and some exceptionally bad backgrounds, I had a hard time deciding what pissed me off more about this issue: the art or the writing.

There is some improvement, however, with issues #7 and #8. I review both of them together because they tell pretty much the same story in pretty much the same way. The overall plot switches gears to a war between a small group of Specials (the bad guys from the previous issues) and all the other Specials. It's done well, for the most part, if you ignore all the unlikely events that lead into this situation. Still, while there is plenty of kicking, punching and things exploding every two pages or so, and it's pretty exciting, Straczynski prevents it from being emotionally significant. Why? Because the people who die in the course of these events are the Specials with lesser powers, the ones we haven't heard about so far, and are not likely to hear about next. I can see why it was done -- the series deals with 113 specials, 112 of them are all supposed to die by the end of it (I'm not telling you anything issue #1 didn't), so you have to find a quick way to get rid of some of them, right? Still, the words "plot device" kept coming to mind. What Straczynski has really missed here are the more intriguing elements. I would have gladly given up the action for the sake of a better-detailed (and believable) look into the police raids on the Specials, or a deeper examination of the relationship between The Poet and Chandra. Zanier's art here is serviceable, but nothing outstanding.

Measured against the high standards set by the first 5 issues, #6-#8 are a big disappointment. I hope this isn't the shape of things to come, and that the slight improvement in issues #7 and #8 marks the direction the series is going.

-- Raz Greenberg

Rising Stars, published by Image Comics, is currently available through comic retailers and newsstands.

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