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Starlight: The Return of Duke McQueen 2/13/2015 7:21:38 AM
This post originally appeared on thunderalleybcp.com
Starlight: The Return of Duke McQueen is Mark Millar’s love letter to Space Age adventure stories. The collected edition is now available.
Starlight introduces readers to Duke McQueen, a one-time air force test pilot. 40 years earlier, Duke flew through a worm hole and wound up on the planet Tantalus. After months of adventures, he overthrew the tyrant ruling the world and then returned home. Duke told his story to the world, only to be branded a liar and a lunatic. His beloved wife Joanne was the only person to believe him.
Following Joanne’s death, Duke is at a crossroads. His sons have drifted away from him and the people in his small Vermont town regard him as some kind of local eccentric. Enter purple-haired space boy Krish Moor. Krish brings the news that Tantalus has once again fallen under the control of a brutal conqueror, a tyrant from a neighboring world covetous of its natural resources. With the resistance movement on the ropes, Krish stole a spaceship and came to Earth to recruit the help of Duke, Tantalus’s most revered and legendary hero.
Reluctant at first, Duke nevertheless returns to Tantalus with Krish. He immediately runs afoul of the new regime and faces an instant death sentence, before hooking up with the resistance. Treachery threatens to break the rebels once and for all, but Duke digs deep, rediscovers the hero he once was and sets about liberating Tantalus for a second time.
Since stepping away from Marvel to focus on creator-owned projects, Millar has covered a lot of stylistic ground. Starlight is a giddy dive into Silver Age adventure comics. Duke’s youthful exploits mirror the kind of wild concepts that populated a lot of comics in the ‘50s and ‘60s, before superheroes retook the focus. But Millar puts some interesting twists on the concept.
Focusing on an older Duke (he’s in his early 60s) is a canny move. The contrast between the dashing young hero and the adrift widower provides the emotional thrust of the plot. Millar injects a real world sensibility into the direction of Duke’s life after he returned from Tantalus and revealed his exploits to the world. Starlight provides a subtle riff on how the real world might have regarded Flash Gordon or Adam Strange and their tales of romantic adventure on distant planets.
Starlight doesn’t ignore the passage of time. Jokes about the older Duke remembering his cholesterol pills and eyeglasses before rocketing back into space would be amusing on their own. But Millar deploys that sort of observation to sharpen the contrast to the younger Duke seen in flashbacks. Once back on Tantalus, Duke’s advanced age catches up with him fairly quickly and puts him in peril. Millar does a nice job of showing Duke rise to the occasion, but more importantly, inspire others to do the same.
Duke is a fascinating creation. He’s gruff and damaged, but also retains an irrepressible spark of hope. The Duke/Joanne relationship receives only a few panels, but Millar makes the most of them and they have real impact. Starlight makes the reader feel Duke’s loss and how it propels his decision to return to Tantalus. It’s very skilled, subtle character work. If none of the supporting players are quite as fully formed as Duke, they mostly don’t need to be. Still, Krish makes for a first rate sidekick and rebel leader Tilda Starr makes a fairly strong impression.
Goran Parlov takes just the right approach for the “retro-future” feel of Starlight. Duke is an imposing bull of a man. Even belittling domestic scenes don’t diminish Duke’s inner nobility. His space uniform is a spot on homage to Silver Age designs, but still retains a modern flair. Parlov does a great job with the contrasting visions of Tantalus, both the exotic paradise of Duke’s youthful adventures and the ground down dystopia of the modern story. Parlov crafts some beautiful one- and two-page spreads and choreographs the action scenes with a real sense of kinetic dynamism. Ive Svorcina is a strong asset on colors. He nails the contrast between the bright, bold action sequences on Tantalus and the more somber, ashen aspects of Duke’s life as a widower. With such strong conception and execution, Starlight is more than just a retro homage, it’s a dreamy, dazzling visual gem.
As Millar continues to expand the horizons of modern comic book storytelling, fans can only hope his other projects are as dynamic and impactful as Starlight.
