Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Goran Parlov
Release Date: 2nd April 2014

The Starlight story has had a personal impact on me. I recently lost my Grandmother to a battle with Pancreatic Cancer, so seeing Duke McQueen lose his wife has me comparing my own Grandfather to the character. Feeling the emotion that Duke’s narrative offers in the first issue with his wife being in paradise – but how can it be paradise when they aren’t together? – is very powerful. And when you add into the emotional side of the story the fact that you have a man that was a savior in a world he didn’t belong but a crazed lunatic in his own, you have a great story with a very humanizing effect.

Forty years have passed since Duke McQueen saved Tantalus, and time has taken its toll. He was a husband, a father, and now a widower whose own kids want nothing to do with him due to their own selfish desires. Alone, and still poked at for claiming to have been sucked into a wormhole and saving an alien race, Duke begins to lose hope and reminisces of his times on the strange world of Tantalus. Just as he is reliving old times, a ship from Tantalus appears  out of nowhere with a renegade 12 year old, well 46 on Tantalus, seeking the “Savior of Tantalus’”‘ help.

I find that Mark Millar has taken subject matter that could be difficult for anyone, losing a loved one and trying to find a way to move on, and made it endearing and dare I say, enjoyable to read. You have an aging man that once did the impossible who has lost the both love of his life and the faith in his own ability to do the impossible again, trying desperately to move on with his life. The character is very easy to become attached to. You feel the emotion he is going through and the choices that he is left with. You feel for him and how his own children all but abandon him. And you most definitely feel his emotions when the place no one believes exists returns to his life and gives it purpose again. Not only is this a great piece of science fiction, but it also serves as a near-perfect representation of the human condition. When things fall apart in our lives we need that one thing to give us purpose again to keep pressing forward.  And for Duke McQueen, that just so happens to be an alien race that needs their hero back.

Rating: 4/5.

The writer of this piece was: Shane Hoffman (aka “Hoff”)
You can also find Hoff on Twitter.