Starlord is one of the miniseries
composing the Annihilation: Conquest saga. The
first few pages of issue 1 bring the new reader up to speed,
providing a reader unfamiliar with the character Starlord
a synopsis of his history and current state of affairs,
which I appreciated as I've never read any previous stories
featuring the character. There's a lot of exposition, but
it's presented in an enjoyable manner.
The rest of the first issue is spent assembling
the cast, a Dirty Half Dozen selected by the Kree from their
brigs to take on a suicide mission to destroy a weapon being
developed by the Phalanx, the adversary in Annihilation:Conquest.
There's been a lot written recently about
the decompression of comics, that the first issue of any
series in recent memory can be skipped over by the astute
reader and that's not entirely untrue in this case. But
the first issue does give some nice character moments and
we get a feel for who the main character is and his motivations
in undertaking this mission.
Issue 2 is where the action picks up, and
does it ever. The mission team is thrown straight into combat
and there's plenty of shooting and stuff blowing up. The
combat scenes are well constructed and each of the mission
participants are seen to be pretty interesting in their
own right, for however long they may last.
The design choices by the art team, the
retro look to the weapons, the character design, even the
World War I inspired uniforms, enhance the atmosphere. This
is the fun of worlds at war combat comics and Keith Giffen
can deliver the goods here. I've never been impressed with
his handling of sentiment or the gentler, nobler emotions,
but when it comes to sardonic violence I do believe he is
the man. With only two issues left I expect a whole lot
of bang for my buck.
All right, Giffen, I've called shotgun,
I'm buckled up, now floor it.
