Starman #8

"A (K)night at the Circus II"
written by James Robinson
pencils by Tony Harris
inks by Wade Von Grawbadger

With the clarity that comes as anger abates, Jack Knight gets a sudden jolt of perspective.

"For a moment there, I thought like a hero.  A big, tough, two-fisted, brightly-costumed hero.  And then I glanced at myself in the mirror."  (Starman #8: 1)

After losing a fight quite fantastically to a circus goon, Knight spoke heroic words, full of bravado and defiance, with little consideration for sense or moderation, words spoken in fiery indignation.  Now he must return for the strange, plaintive blue man with some plan to rescue him...or no plan, mostly none.  But he goes in anyway, partly perhaps out of some sense of obligation to his father, but mostly because someone must.

Jack Knight walks in mostly blind, and he finds his adversary far more powerful than anticipated—an incubus, ironically named Bliss, feeding off of the uniquely savory pain and humiliation of his "freak show"—but Knight finds far more allies than he imagined, weak and sometimes in Bliss's thrall, but eager for freedom and generous with information.  When his victory does eventually, and inevitably, come, it is at the side of Mikaal Tomas, the very man—a brief and very different former Starman—whom he came back to emancipate.  It's fitting enough, but hardly as meaningful or as soulful as Robinson seems to want it.  Instead, the issue's most powerful moment is easily its final splash.  At first glance, its a celebration with Knight's own self-instructions to make sure he receives payment—in the form of posters and props—for his service.  But it's Mikaal's longing and tearful and startlingly unengaged stare at the sky that steals the issue.

"A (K)night at the Circus II" tenses under some of its own anxieties.  There's a kind of uncanny beauty in physical peculiarities, in strangeness itself.  The line between looking and gawking is always a movable one, especially for the person on the other end.  But Starman is also a series that has shown great interest in cultural relics:  previously vaudeville, here the Dust Bowl freak show.  Why a "special person" would be more delectable for Bliss is otherwise unexplained, since other than Mikaal the freaks all seem human.  Starman and Robinson walk a strange line:  these are whole and complete characters with painful insecurities and strong wills, but the comic—like Bliss—insists that they are different, and though Knight may berate himself softly for imagining Tod Browning as an acceptable model for viewing these "freaks," we too are asked to marvel at their (admittedly fictional) oddities in Harris's fine artwork.

[June 1995]