REVIEW: Star Mage #1

Writer: JC De La Torre
Artwork: Ray Dillon
Review: Cody "Madman" Miller

So last month the fellas here at the HCB decided we would pair off and choose books for each other to read and review. It sounded like a good way for each of us to color outside the lines a tad and escape to the danger zone. On most days there are a fair amount of books that we all read and love, but the ones that we disagree on are what has given me a pretty good understanding of each of my fellow writers’ preference towards comics. So when I drew Will “wool trousers” Dubbeld out of the hat, I knew it was going to get interesting.

Star Mage here I come. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the cover was Harry Potter in space. Yeah, not so much.

Darien Connors is our guy. Darien is the stereotypical high school dorky bastard that all the jocks pick on. What’s not stereotypical is Darien’s old man’s day job. Douglas, the dorky bastard’s father, was an astronaut who was trying to be the first sausage to land on Mars. He mysteriously crashed and burned. Exactly two years after that fateful day, somewhere in Mars’ atmosphere, we find Darien in all his patheticness run up a flag pole by his under-britches once again by his arch-nemesis, the evil jock guy . . . yep.

All of the sudden the American flag gets hit by lightning, and our little nerdy bastard gets his magical hoodoo powers. Darien ends up escaping his tormentors and fleeing into the woods only to be abducted by aliens (yeah, that’s right, I said aliens) that look like humans, and happen to know Darien’s old man. Huh? Who knew? That’s where this here first issue leaves us. Darien Shanghaied is rocketing through space.

This book really, really needs a hug, because I’m about to call it bad names. I totally couldn’t get into the story or the middle-of-the-road artwork. There was an impressive half a page comb over, but hopefully you never have to see it. Just ignore it and it’ll go away.