Jim Starlin September 7, 2009

        Jim Starlin is on Facebook. My general feeling on the topic is OMIGOD
OMIGOD OMIGOD. Should I send him a message, post on his wall? What would I say?
“I love your work, I’m your biggest fan?” Yeah, he’s never heard that before. And it just
doesn’t express the extent of the sentiment. After all, this is Jim Starlin, one of the last of
the Giants. The Giants of comic books. But mostly the Giants of my childhood heroes.
         Fred Hembeck proposed in a Comic Book Artists commentary that Jim Starlin is
our generation’s Kirby. He was referring to the more cosmic of Jack Kirby’s 1960s work,
like the galaxy spanning adventures of the Fantastic Four and Thor, which he took to
even higher levels of cosmic audacity in the 1970s with The New Gods and the creation
of Darkseid (probably DC’s most profitable villain after the Joker). Starlin’s first work
appeared at Marvel soon after Kirby’s New Gods was cancelled, and everybody has
commented on the resemblance between Kirby’s Darkseid and Starlin’s first Marvel
creation Thanos. So, Yes, Starlin seemed to pick up where Kirby left off.
         But I don’t see Starlin as our generation’s Kirby mostly because at the same time
that Starlin was creating his most beloved work, Captain Marvel and Warlock, Kirby was
doing Omac and The Eternals among others, including his version of 2001: A Space
Odyssey, which probably the most far-out comic in the “cosmic” category ever published.
Our generation’s Kirby was Jack Kirby. Jim Starlin was our Jim Starlin.  
        Starlin’s “cosmic” was a different flavor than Kirby’s. Kirby’s was bombastic and
external, it was about the technology and adventure. Starlin’s was more internal and
spiritual. His characters went to the outer reaches of the universe, but also visited their
own minds and souls to battle their inner demons. And Starlin miraculously kept it
interesting to ten-year-old readers.
        Starlin’s internal conflicts required him to create his own visual language to
communicate such abstract concepts as insanity and death. He created design oriented
pages that eschewed typical narrative.
        Starlin is a solid draftsman to this day. His characters have mass and weight, exist
in space and cast shadows. Modern day “photo realistic” comic book artists can learn a
lot from studying his work. His figures are pure fantasy, no real human can move the way
his superheroes do, but his solid rendering makes them “real” to the reader. Not
everything needs to look like a photograph, real talent can make fantasies believable.
        Jim Starlin was a giant of my childhood. To some people of my age, Star Wars
was a generation defining event. To those of us who read Starlin’s planet hopping space
opera Warlock, Star Wars seemed old hat. The splash page of the Warlock story “Death
Ship” makes one wonder how much the makers of Star Wars studied Starlin’s work,
seeing how much it resembles Star Wars’ famous opening scene and logo. I think they
cribbed some of Starlin’s aliens too.
         Most of the comic books I drew for myself in the 70s followed a Jim Starlin
model, usually involving a cosmic war and being resolved with a psychic battle rather
than a typical superhero slugfest. By the 1980s cosmic freak-outs and psychedelic
storylines went out of fashion and were replaced by “grim and gritty” Rambo types,
macho kill-crazy anti-heroes. There seemed no more room for spiritual quests in the
superhero genre, and I gave them up by the time I graduated high school.
        But seeing Jim Starlin on Facebook brings back the good old days, when there
was no limit to what one creator could do with $20 dollars worth of art supplies and a lot
of imagination.

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