Who Cares About the Clouds When We’re Together?
Written By: Amanda Conner & Jimmy
Palmiotti
Art By: Elsa Charretier, Hi-Fi
Letters By: Corey Breen
Cover Price: $2.99
On Sale Date: May 11, 2016
**Non-Spoilers and Score At The Bottom**
And so we have come to the
conclusion of our twelve-issue Starfire
maxiseries—one Palmiotti and Conner claim to have intended to last this long,
though of course if it sold eighty-thousand copies a month I think the
powers-that-be at DC Comics would have seen fit to keep the series going. But
it shipped about a tenth of that, and Starfire is headed off to a new role in
the DCU after Rebirth, where she will
join the Teen Titans (not to be confused with the Titans), largely restoring
the team’s roster to its much beloved Wolfman/Perez incarnation from the 1980s.
I’m excited to read that, but I must say I am going to miss Starfire’s solo. It hasn’t been my
favorite comic, some issues have been better than others, but it has fairly
well redeemed Kori from the sexual cipher she played in Red Hood & the Outlaws and introduced a good degree of fun to
the character. Not to mention it brought the pink alien earwig from Teen Titans Go! into comics continuity,
something that should have happened a while ago. So I think Starfire has done
what it intended to, and now it gets a swan song with issue number twelve.
Let’s send her off the way she would want us to, okay? With light sexual
innuendo and minor property destruction caused by a verbal misunderstanding.
Before you smash your computer, read my review, okay? It will help your
mourning.
Kori is back topside and
just in time for Key West’s Fantasy Fest, an event that happens in October
where everyone gets drunk and…well, pretty much dresses like Starfire. If they
are wearing anything at all, that is. The Florida Keys are partly a place where
clothing, especially above the waist, is optional. And before the scores of
thirteen year-old boys that read my reviews start packing their bags for Boobie
Town, I’d caution them that clothing and
keeping a hot bod are optional out there, and you’re just as likely to see that
some old lady that looks like Charo in 2016 swinging her cans around as you
would to see Charo in 1980. Who am I kidding? Thirteen year-old boys have no
compunctions where tits are concerned. So Starfire and Atlee enjoy Fantasy
Fest, while Stella does her policing bit…for three panels. We spent all of last
issue reading these ladies gab like hens in a sewing circle, and now that we’re
at the premier event for Key West, we get three panels? I expected at least
half an issue of cleavage and almost-exposed butts here! And I didn’t expect
them all to be orange. So now, we
begin Kori’s tearful goodbyes, which actually make others more tearful than she
gets. Damned Tamaranian optimism.
First, Sol explains that
he and Stella’s aunt’s muscular dystrophy has gotten worse, so he’s moved her
into the pool house, where Kori had been staying. Sol and Stella are very
apologetic, and Sol has made arrangements to let Kori stay in the house proper
while they find her a new place to live, but Kori is decidedly breezy about it
and shuffles off to the Not Sea World local aquarium to see if her job is still
intact, after spending an extended vacation in Atlee’s underground world. Turns
out that you can’t disappear from this job for a week and a half and have it
waiting for you when you return, unlike Eric’s job which seems incapable of
firing him. Kori isn’t surprised, and on her way out chats it up with a dolphin
that asks her to reunite him or her with his or her love out in the ocean.
Figuring she can’t be fired twice, Kori grabs the aquatic mammal and soars out
of the joint, plopping themselves into a school of porpoise pals that swim
around and act like the sea kittens they are. Hanging with the lively dolphins
wears her out, so Kori says her farewell and heads back home, where she crashes
on the couch for fifteen hours. While she’s out like a light, Sol talks to his
sister Stella about something that transpired while they were under the Earth’s
crust: Kori’s love bug Syl’Khee sang an interstellar R&B song that caused
Sol and his Coast Guard partner Ravena to smooch. They discussed it, and
realized that they truly love each other due to the imminent end of this
maxiseries, and they agreed that Ravena could wear Sol’s fraternity pin after
he let Kori down easy. Turned out to be easier than he thought, since Kori was
standing behind him the entire time he explained his near infidelity. She
brushes it off because, hell, that’s her prerogative, I mean have you seen this
woman? She may be orange but she can pretty much write her own ticket where
sexual partners are concerned. She casually asks Sol if he still wants to get
bizzay even while seeing Ravena, but since he declines she flies off, probably
to find Kanye West or something.
That evening, Starfire
sets up a beach party picnic for all of her Floridian friends (and Atlee),
where she announces that she will be leaving the Keys for future adventures
that will probably include more syntactic misunderstandings and public displays
of nudity. Atlee seems particularly distraught, so Kori suggests Atlee goes
with her, which got me excited because it would be pretty cool to see Atlee on
the post-Rebirth Teen Titans. But no,
she can’t because she has to guard this entrance to the underworld, and plus
she finally found a cheap place to live in Key West—that’s not me making stuff
up this time, that’s actually one of her reasons. That’s how you know this book
is being written by a New Yorker, when real estate concerns can dictate the
manner of your personal bliss. Before the party’s over, Starfire and Atlee team
up to save a pilot and to stop his airplane from careening into the crowd
below, which only proves they would make great teammates. I hope we see Atlee
again, she’s got Earth-manipulating powers, but isn’t a goth chick like Terra
or own a stupid costume like Geo-Force.
Kori is soaking up some
more Fantasy Fest when an old pal swoops in to say…something. It’s Superman
himself, the guy that first suggested she cut loose from the Outlaws and find
her own way, which is to say become less murderous and more like her naïve
character from Teen Titans Go! They kind of dance around the issue of Starfire
joining the Teen Titans, and then Superman invites her to Metropolis to “help,”
which really raised my Stranger Danger alarm. Kori says she has one more
goodbye to make, and it’s to Stella, whose relationship has gone from mistrust
and misunderstanding to BFF-status over the course of this series. They discuss
the bombshell Stella drunkenly dropped last issue: that she doesn’t want Kori
to hook up with Sol because she will ultimately break his heart. Kori says, “That’s
alright, baby brother, but we’re still friends” and signs her yearbook with “K.I.T.”
and “2Good + 2Be = 4Gotten.” Then Starfire and Syl’Khee take off into the night
sky, off for new adventures that I have a sneaking suspicion start in roughly
two months!
This comic book, like
every comic book, was not for everyone. Speaking personally, I liked the move
towards Starfire’s character from Teen
Titans Go! and away from how she was in Red
Hood & the Outlaws, though at times I felt it went too far in the other
direction. I think it could have been fewer issues, or perhaps some of the
issues could have been plotted better, but it has done what it was supposed to:
restored Kori to a likeable character we can all root for. It’s just too bad
not a lot of people seem to have watched it unfold. One thing you have to admit
about Starfire is that the art has
been spectacular the whole time, and I particularly liked the work in these
final issues by Elsa Charretier, Hi-Fi. We may not see this exact same version
of Starfire anytime soon, but I sure hope we see a lot more work from Elsa
Charretier. An excellent talent whose work is precise and lively, and who would
inject levity into any book that needs it.
Bits and Pieces
The farewell issue of the series, wherein Starfire says farewell. All loose ends are tied up, and necessary bridges are burned, and in the final analysis we can say that this book did what it was supposed to: make Starfire a character that more people would want to read about. While the book itself didn't turn huge numbers, I think Kori's character redemption was real, and I expect something closer to this post-Rebirth than what we got prior to the maxi-series. As it has been for the previous eleven issues, the art in the final story is phenomenal, and if there can be only one legacy of this title, let it be Elsa Charretier doing more work for DC Comics. Because I would love to see this style on something like Green Lantern.
8/10
Hopefully Charretier gets a Rebirth book!
ReplyDeletethat would be sweet as hayell
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