Customer Reviews

Silver Star (Jack Kirby's Silver Star)

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Silver Star is very much a "phoned in" effort by Kirby, an attempt to make a little more cash towards the end of a brilliant but largely unprofitable career, without much concern for care and quality. Norma Richmond's face frequently and spontaneously turns into the shape of a football as her breasts explode and jut out to the sides, only to have both return to normal proportions a panel later, a key character who dominates the first half of the first issue is completely forgotten by the third, and the dialogue is horrendously stilted and corny...even by Kirby standards.

Still, the one quality that stands out as being worthwhile in this volume is the villain. This should be no surprise as Kirby has always been the king of arch villains, frequently making them even more appealing than his heroes. How many of us are bigger fans of Doctor Doom than Reed Richards, Galactus than Silver Surfer, Darkseid than Orion? Indeed, the mad and religiously fervent demigod Darius Drumm is a fascinating speciman, and Kirby clearly understands that, giving him the center stage in this series. For, even though it's called "Silver Star," we learn more about Drumm's origin than Silver Star's, spend far more time analyzing his psychology and world views while SS is just a goodie goodie trying to stop him, and even the climax of the series, though involving SS from the sidelines, is more about Drumm standing in the way of himself. Drumm is the star of this series and the one quality that makes it worth reading.

Unfortunately, in contrast, Silver Star is a dull and relatively useless hero, bringing no personality to the story and repeatedly failing to save literally millions of lives while only managing to protect the three people closest to him. In all the Kirby classics, even while the villain stole the spotlight, he shared a special connection with the hero that somehow made the hero and his struggle more interesting. For Doom, it was his rivalry with Reed Richards and his hopeless love for Sue Storm. For Galactus, it was his reluctance to harm his formerly loyal servant. For Darkseid, his secret relationship to Orion was virtually all that made Orion an intriguing character.

Drumm and Silver Star bear uncanny resemblances to Darkseid and Orion, both visually and by the fact that they are both uber-powerful gods, even while the villain is hopelessly more powerful than the hero. Yet Darkseid and Orion share that secret relationship, and from that stems so much of the interpersonal drama of the series, so much of the investment in Orion's struggle. In contrast, Silver Star and Drumm have no deeper connection beyond the fact that they are both near-gods and SS is bent on stopping him. There's no buy-in for SS's character beyond the hopeless frustration he feels as he repeatedly fails to stop Drumm (though this borders on Kamandi-level whining).

In the end, there's a lot wrong with this volume, but if you can tolerate the hero long enough, the villain just might make the read worthwhile. And be sure to read Jack's original movie treatment from which this comic was derived at the end of the volume. Jack clearly put a lot more care into the would-be Silver Star movie than he did the comic. And Norma Richmond/Jayne Davidson, the invulnerable movie star who drives herself off of cliffs and straps herself to bombs, had serious pin-up potential.

While I'm not reviewing the story here (you either like Kirby's weirder, wild independent work or you don't), I would like to say that the actual hardcover produced of Silver Star is GORGEOUS. Oversized, dazzling color, a historical introduction by the original publisher, along with the screenplay treatment of the proposed SS movie and unused cover sketches -- I don't know how a better tribute to this series could have been produced. Excellent job Image!

Jack Kirby is a legend in American comic books. He created or co-created Captain America, Thor, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. In the 70s he went on to create less-famous but still prominent characters like the New Gods and the Demon.

In the 80s he worked with Pacific Comics to publish creator-owned titles, finally realizing his dream of comic creators owning their own works, just like ordinary authors. His move to Pacific comics also saw one of the first times a publisher upgraded the paper stock for better printing.

Silver Star continues some of the themes he'd developed earlier, Silver Star, like Captain America, is the product of military experiments. But he is far more powerful than any hero who preceded him, able to rearrange matter with his mind, creating castles, vehicles and anything else he can imagine. Against him is the evil Darius Drumm, a cult leader and product of the same experiments. Between them are other products of the experiments including Great Masai 'the Goliath of the Ghetto'. The conflict builds towards a suitably epic climax with whole cities being destroyed but then ends abruptly, as if someone told Kirby he only had one page to wrap everything up.

The book raises deep issues of humanity becoming obsolete as the supermen emerge and of battles where the human race is nothing but a bystander.

But the work is seriously flawed. It lacks subtlety, the characters rant and rave and act like, well, comic book characters. Plot points are introduced and dropped quickly. And the ending is very unfulfilling.

In the introduction, we learn that Kirby wrote the book with little or no input from editors or the publisher and even asked them not to publish negative letters. Even the publishers admit the work was rough.

So Silver Star is an interesting piece of comic book history and of Jack Kirby's body of work, but not a particularly great comic.

Silver Star was originally planned by Kirby as a movie. This is somewhat evident in the way the series was written. The art is not New Gods or Fantastic Four quality but definately really good for Kirby in his early 70s.

Fun ride of a story as all Kirby's big concepts can be. I enjoyed rereading the series.

I know that Jack Kirby was responsible for some of the greatest Silver Age books ever created - Fantastic Four, The Hulk. and many others at Marvel. I own many of these books having been a comic book fan since the mid 1970's.

So I had not ever read Silver Star; it just didn't appeal to me. I finally got it recently, and sadly, I was very disappointed.

It appears that Kirby was writing the same kind of stories he has always written, and the artwork - down to character poses and scenes - seem like carbon copies of the work he did in the 1960's. In many ways, this book and its art seem very reminiscent of his New Gods series for DC.

Some artists grow over time, others don't. Unfortunately, it appears that Kirby did not. After reading the foreward by the then-chief editor of Pacific, this only reinforced my belief that Kirby stoppped growing as an artist thirty years after his greatest works. He states that Kirby accepted no input, and acted like he knew it all. I'm paraphrasing of course, but that's the impression I walked away with.