Stargirl - The Lost Children #3 // Review
Courtney and Emiko have found themselves on a forgotten island. Emiko has been captured. She’s in an ancient-looking stone brick prison. Courtney is looking for her. What she finds is something quite a bit different in Stargirl - The Lost Children #3. Writer Geoff Johns continues to weave a fun, little story into the margins of the history of the DC Universe with artist Todd Nauck and colorist Matt Herms. Though it’s largely an exercise in character creation on the part of Johns, there are more than a few moments in the third issue of the mini-series to make for a fun chapter in the life of Courtney Whitmore.
It’s a dangerous island populated by lost sidekicks of the Golden Age. The world has forgotten about them. This would be really upsetting for them if they knew about it. They still think only a little time has passed since they were kidnapped and taken to the island. They don’t know that it’s been well over half a century. Courtney keeps trying to tell them, but there are a hell of a lot of distractions. Meanwhile, Emiko is trapped by a sinister villain known as The Childminder. The catch: she doesn’t seem to think that she’s a villain.
Johns’s work in this chapter has been introduced elsewhere in recent months. It’s kind of fun to see all of the sidekicks that he’s created for Golden Age heroes. In the third issue of the series, he finally gets down to the process of introducing them, but as the process takes much of the issue, there really isn’t a whole lot of time left over for any actual storytelling beyond all the introductions. Thankfully, he’s also doing a bit more work introducing the villain, who is almost certainly hiding some kind of revelation behind her mask.
Nauck’s style serves the series well. His detailed renderings of form and emotion do a good job of delivering distinct personalities to the page in some of the bigger crowd shots. There’s a sharp mood being brought to the page with all the sidekicks and real menace lurking in plain sight in the scenes with the Childminder. Herms’s colors vividly bring a shimmering technicolor ensemble to the page. The huge Golden Age-inspired cast of sidekicks feels that much more authentic with all the bright color that splashes the page in their presence.
The mini-series is now halfway through. With all the introductions well and fully handled, Johns and company can go about the business of diving into the heart of the action, which should be a lot of fun. Once things really get going, the story’s momentum should kick in and take things in an enjoyable direction moving forward. There’s real potential in the sidekicks getting off the island and moving into the rest of the DC Universe. Johns has done a nice job of making an engaging ensemble that should be fun if they manage to make it beyond the mini-series.
