The Savage Strength of Starstorm #3 // Review
Master Tiger. Tigrax. Tigress. Tiger Soldier. Tiger Li. Tiger Lin. Tigron. Grand Tiger Ti. They are...the Tiger Clan. In addition to REALLY working with a single motif, they’re a group of intergalactic bounty hunters. They’re being hired by Princess Z’Shan Draigo of the Dragonian Empire. Their mission? To acquire the weapon known as Starstorm. Currently, that weapon is being held..by some American Earth kid in high school. How hard could it be to take it from him? They find out just EXACTLY how difficult it’s going to be in The Savage Strength of Starstorm #3. Writer/artist Drew Craig continues his superhero serial with colorist Jason Finestone.
The weapon in question is dealing with a Tyrannosaurus rex-looking dinosaur. In the city. There’s a blast of energy, and the whole thing mutates into a bunch of frogs. The kid in question is very confused about the whole thing, which is totally understandable, as it all really IS pretty strange. He’s learning to live with the strange. And then there’s a group of tiger fetishists who come along asking for the weapon in question. He’d be happy to give it to them only...he doesn’t exactly know how he could part with it.
Craig’s story feels like such a weird superhero casserole thrown together from a whole bunch of different elements that are all pretty cool in their original forms. It’s kind of like an easter egg hunt looking for all of the different elements that he’s fused together into a single unit. On the surface, the traditional Star Brand homage mixes with Wild C.A.T.s and a few other classic superhero tropes. The central event here involves the hero’s potential love interest. The big moment with her at issue’s end mixes stylistic elements of iconic moments with Supergirl, Electra, and Gwen Stacy.
Craig’s art style continues to have a visual reality all its own. It feels so totally unlike the traditional approach to superhero art, as it is deliberately crude but very, very vivid and distinct. The anatomy is stiff. The action is awkward. The framing is...actually kind of weird in places, but overall there is a distinct feel about it that becomes quite endearing once the reader’s eyes get accustomed to it. Finestone’s coloring goes a long way toward making it appealing, but it DOES feel a little strange looking at anything else for about...a half hour after reading the comic.
There’s SUCH a strange and distinct reality being brought to the page by Craig. It has a language and reality all its own that doesn’t quite feel like anything else. The style is really cool in places, but the story is SO derivative of so many different elements in the superhero genre that it’s kind of difficult to walk away from the substance of the story with any kind of impression at all. Given enough issues, it would be interesting to see where Craig is taking the story, but at the outset, it’s just kind of a weird visual exercise.
