Reviewed: Rising Stars #6 by J


Rising Stars #6



Reviewed: Rising Stars #6 by J. Michael Straczynski and Christian Zanier

The plot: Poet moves to confront Patriot, who is murdering the Specials, while Patriot uses deceit to form a coalition to assist in his plan.

 

At this point, while I am committed to buying every issue of this series (due solely to the quality writing of J. Michael Straczynski), I have to write it off as an interesting failure.

It continues to boggle my mind that JMS does not insist on a more competent artist to illustrate his increasingly compelling tale. Artist Christian Zanier was brought in to replace Keu Cha, whose style to my eye is not much different than Zanier. Zanier might be slightly better, but neither is capable of illustrating complex characters or the range of emotion those characters are illuminated by.

And at this point, it's a damn shame because JMS is beginning, after a few lethargic setup issues, to get to the meat of his story; in the hands of a competent artist, this could be very compelling work indeed. I don't think it deserves to be called any kind of masterwork, but it is a very good tale, and perhaps with another artist, it could be a masterwork.

Look at the wasted potential: On the splash page, Zanier demonstrates his aptitude for drawing buildings while the backs of the audience's heads look like a bunch of balloons. And what's up with the hats on the cops on the stage? The one on the cop on the far right looks like it's about 9 inches high. Perhaps it's blowing off his head?

The crowd shot of panel one, page two demonstrates Zanier's belief that homo sapiens are descended not from primates, but giraffes. Most characters in this title that are not morbidly obese have necks as long or longer than their actual heads. The Patriot/Flagg stand-in in this first sequence is depicted in a series of thinly disguised Mike Zeck swipes (I counted at least four, more likely five), leading me to wonder if Zanier will be capable of depicting any superheroics in a style of his own.

I also chuckle every time Zanier is called to portray characters in civilian clothes. Either they look like the guys in suits on page one, indicating Zanier has no reference pictures to show him what a suit actually looks like on a human being, or they look like the characters during Jason's revelation of his activities to his new allies: skin-tight shirts that might as well be a superhero costume for the level of realism involved.

I'm sure Zanier is quite proud of the deep perspective shot of a church on page seven, but the surrounding streets look as sterile as a eunuch soaked in Lysol. When the action moves to the office of a U. S. senator, the sterility continues, with the added benefit of the senator providing four identical overstuffed recliners for his guests. Government perks indeed! How convenient he had four chairs across from his desk for those four guests. But with Zanier, convenience is what it's all about; he's one of the laziest pencilers around.

The pages once Jason assembles his conspirators also demonstrate his weakness as a storyteller: the handsome, male characters are completely indistinguishable from each other, leaving no way for the reader to invest any kind of individual emotion to them.

The art, it should be said, is completely in keeping with that in other Top Cow titles--lousy, but enough flash to confuse the untrained eye into thinking the artist has some sort of skill. You can see the same tripe in any given issue of Witchblade or Fathom, leading me to think whoever is in charge of the art on the Top Cow titles is either visually illiterate or playing a very cruel joke on the line's readers. In Rising Stars, all of the characters look slightly sleazy, and the overall effect reminds me mightily of the Jack T. Chick religious pseudo-comics I used to chuckle over as a kid growing up in Florida (Christ, those things were everywhere!).

Online readers have speculated that Rising Stars would be better served by an artist such as Dave Gibbons, but given the Watchmen-like nature of the story JMS is trying to tell here, that would probably be a little incestuous. Certainly Gibbons would be preferable to Zanier or Cha (hell, an ink-drenched monkey in a straightjacket would be preferable to those two), but I do think a fresh perspective is needed here, and soon. JMS clearly wants to leave a legacy with his comics work, and the legacy is being pissed away more and more with each passing issue.

And it's a goddamned shame, because the story, while not revolutionary, is better than the stories being told in 95 percent of mainstream comics today. It certainly is superior to any Spider-Man, X-Men, or Superman story I've read recently. But the art is crippling the storytelling, and will continue to do so as long as such amateurs as Zanier and Cha are allowed to illustrate JMS's scripts.

 

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