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Walter Simonson’s STAR SLAMMERS: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION (review)

Review by Lily Fierro
Star Slammers: The Complete Collection
Written and illustrated by Walter Simonson
Lettered by John Workman
Colored by Leonard O’Grady
Published by IDW Publishing
Price: $49.99
ISBN: 978-1-63140-230-2

Question: How do you read a collection created in parts from the 1970s to the 1990s?

Answer: By trying to connect the dots between the parts?

Star Slammers: The Complete Collection compiles all of Walter Simonson’s creations for the Star Slammers series across three decades.

In the informative and enlightening introduction, Simonson details the humble origins of Star Slammers as a promotional series to get the World Science Fiction Convention of 1974 to be held in Washington D.C. which then transformed into major projects during his time at RISD.

In the process of explaining the earliest incarnation of Star Slammers, Simonson also outlines his own trajectory of growth over the course of expanding the series, setting a guidance course of progress for the reader to follow while reading the collection.

Oddly, this course to follow Simonson’s growth as an artist and storyteller is paused and put aside until the end of the collection, for the introduction describes the RISD and World SF Convention work for Star Slammers, but those pages are placed toward the end of the collection.

Instead of diving into the infancy of Star Slammers, the collection somewhat jarringly begins with the first formal publications of the series, opening with Marvel Graphic Novel No. 6, Star Slammers, originally released in 1983.

This first graphic novel of Star Slammers exists as a perfect stand alone piece to introduce the history and world of the Star Slammers, the most powerful and capable mercenaries in space. With this first graphic novel, the reader understands the ultimate weapon of the Star Slammers, the Silvermind Bridge, a telepathic capability of all Star Slammers to communicate rapidly and simultaneously with each other, allowing for ultimate unity in battle and a communication channel difficult to interrupt and disband.

In this opening graphic novel, the Star Slammers must prepare to battle their greatest and longest enemies, the Hunters of Orion. To fight this historic battle, Simonson introduces the Grandfather, the leader and name bearer of the Star Slammers, and the Star Slammers who will lead the fight: Ethon, Sphere, and Jalaia. Constructed as the perfect introductory episode to a series, the Marvel Graphic Novel No. 6 serves as the mythology foundation to the Star Slammers’ fiction.

Picking up a generations later, the second part of the collection introduces the reader to the Star Slammer Rojas in the midst of a fever induced dream. Originally released as issue #114 of the Dark Horse Presents series in 1996, this second section of the collection refocuses the Star Slammers series on Rojas and his individual adventures and bridges the gap between the Marvel graphic novel of 1983 and the individual Star Slammers comics released in 1994, which had remained disparate until this precursor was created to tie the arc of Star Slammer ancestors created in the 80s to Rojas, the Star Slammer arc created in the 1990s.

After this introduction to Rojas, the collection continues with the individual Star Slammers issues, collectively titled as The Minoan Agendas, which compose the next five sections. Following Rojas on a job filled with double crosses, shape shifting, and telepathic interruptions and trickery, the chapters of The Minoan Agendas are the most realized creations of the collection. Here, Simonson’s storytelling and dialog writing are the most fluid, and the artwork shines with beautiful details and imaginative characters.

To close off the individual Star Slammers issues, an epilogue to The Minoan Agendas exists but feels rather aloof. It certainly may be a bridge to a non-existent Star Slammers of the 2000s, but given that the continuation of the series has yet to arrive, the epilogue feels like a clumsy attempt to extend the story of Rojas and The Minoan Agendas. I certainly appreciated its inclusion in order to make the collection as complete as possible, but the epilogue feels anti-climactic, especially given the strength of the issues preceding it.

Lastly, to close off the collection, we finally see the infancy of Star Slammers: the RISD and World Science Fiction Convention pages, which definitely show Simonson’s progress and growth as a young artist, as described in the introduction, but given their placement in the collection, feel like a reversion of technique and skill because by the time we reach this early work, we’ve already seen the most polished and accomplished parts of Star Slammers.

In comprehensiveness, Star Slammers: The Complete Collection achieves its goal to give the reader everything created for the series. In creating a seamless flow between the parts created in different decades, this collection fails.

The best collections and retrospectives allow readers/viewers to see the incremental growth and development of their favorite creator. A successful collection will pull together disparate pieces into a sequence to create a meaningful and insightful connection between all of the parts.

Sadly, this collection of Star Slammers does the series a bit of an injustice by placing the earliest work at the end of the collection and the introduction to the earliest work at the beginning of the collection. As a result, the chronological and plot progression across the series feel interrupted and disjointed toward the end, preventing the readers from seeing and celebrating a continuous spectrum of progress across the three decades of Star Slammers.

Star Slammers: The Complete Collection will keep you engaged with its individual sections (after all, the archetypal plots and the characters will keep you reading on), but understanding how the parts fit together will require some backtracking and some digging on the internet. Rather than including transition artwork between the sections, explanations behind the sequencing would have made this collection more cohesive and even more comprehensive.

At the end, all we’re left with is a dazzling array of characters, stories, and artwork because the essential curatorial glue needed to pull all of the Star Slammers work into a collection is sorely missing. This collection will fulfill the desires of fans of Star Slammers to own all of the work but will not offer much more information or insight into the full development of the series over time.

And, for those approaching Star Slammers with fresh eyes (as I did myself), you will be left with a desire for more introductory or explanatory pieces in order to gain more appreciation for Simonson’s creative process and skill in establishing and advancing his first series.

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