Starstruck is an American science fiction comic book series. It is based on the off-Broadway stage play of the same name written by Elaine Lee, with contributions from Susan Norfleet Lee and Dale Place. An audio drama was also published.
Overview Starstruck, in comics form, has been produced at various intervals since 1982 by writer Elaine Lee and artist Michael Wm. Kaluta; their primary collaborators are colorist Lee Moyer and letterer Todd Klein. The series, epic in scope, has been carried across multiple comic companies, amongst them Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and IDW Publishing. It was collected in a revised and recolored hardcover book form as Starstruck Deluxe Edition in 2011.
Since its inception, Starstruck has built a cult audience and critical acclaim from peers, periodicals, and fans for the sophistication of its storytelling. Most noted is the predominantly female cast, portrayed by Lee with a range and nuance that confounds gender stereotypes. Kaluta, an esteemed veteran of comics and illustration, is often commended for the virtuosity and imaginative detail of his artwork. Also, the series is cited for the progressiveness of its rich and complex structure: Starstruck preceded Watchmen in using innovations like nonlinear storytelling, overlapping dialogue, multiple story threads, back-up text, unreliable narrators, adjunct stories, underlying themes, recurring symbols, and an almost symphonic interconnectedness.
Premise The story is set in an anarchic future in which humanity spans the universe. The Dread Dictator has fallen and a power vacuum sparks a chess game of eccentric players scheming for control. The serio-comic stories follow Captain Galatia 9 and her running partner, Brucilla The Muscle, as they navigate madcap scenarios and surreal misadventures in between the galactic infighting.
Play
Elaine Lee herself played the adventurous lead, Captain Galatia 9, while Lee's sister, Susan Norfleet Lee played her rowdy pilot, Brucilla the Muscle. Noted illustrator Michael Wm. Kaluta played a major role in visual aspects of the play, working on sets, costumes and promotional material.Susan Adamo. "Starstruck: Artist Mike Kaluta's Designs For This SF-Comedy Satire". Starlog Magazine #41 (December 1980) P.24. The story is set in the future, and features several strong female lead characters. A strange and gleefully corrupt future version of the Girl Guides, the Galactic Girl Guides, are introduced in a subplot that leads to the climax. The Starstruck play was produced in 1980, with another staging in 1983.Elaine Lee, Susan Norfleet, and Dale Place (March 1985). Starstruck (A Space Opera). Broadway Play Publishing, Inc.
The script of the play () was published in 1985 and is still available. An audioplay adaption was recorded in 2010, and released on CD and download.
Background and creation Elaine Lee was an actor in the late 1970s New York City theatre and television scene. She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her work on the long-running NBC soap opera The Doctors;"Daytime Emmy Awards winners and nominations, 1980" she portrayed the troubled Mildred Trumble, a character modeled after Sissy Spacek's character, Pinky Rose from Robert Altman's film 3 Women. Seeing a lack of range and depth in the roles being offered to female actors, she formed a Manhattan theatre company with her sister, Susan Norfleet Lee, and actor friends which they called Wild Hair Productions. The Lees wrote their own plays for the company to star in, starting with Brief Cases.
During the writing of a second play, The Contamination of the Kokomo Lounge, Elaine began pulling together ideas for a science fiction play. The Lee sisters were at a Manhattan bar/cafe called The Library, discussing ideas over a pile of science fiction magazines when illustrator Michael Wm. Kaluta, a neighbor who often sketched there, approached them asking, "Are you science fiction fans?" Elaine kept his card for the future. Elaine Lee was subsequently impressed by seeing Kaluta's art in the West Side Comics store, on a poster showcasing The Studio, an art collective he shared with Barry Windsor Smith, Jeffrey Jones, and Berni Wrightson.Zack Smith. "The Starstruck Chronicles, I: Bringing Starstruck Back", Newsarama, June 17, 2009. Kaluta was impressed by the wit and range of their second play: he recalled thinking: "If they're going to do a science fiction play, they're going to do it very well".
Elaine Lee's first draft was on a stack of 5×7 index cards. Lee wrote all the drafts of the script, with some dialogue suggestions from Susan Norfleet and Dale Place. The quality of the material persuaded Kaluta to create the show poster. He became the costume designer after asking what costumes the actors would wear in the poster, and the set designer when the regular one got sick.Peter Sanderson. "Amazons, Anarchy, And Androids". Amazing Heroes #57 (October 15, 1984) P.26. Kaluta told an interviewer backstage about the evolution of his role: "Should it be like a real 1930s movie poster? That's when I realized I wanted to do characterizations of the entire cast on the poster. But, I had to know what they looked like. So that's when I started designing the costumes. Because I designed them so intricately, I had to build them. And that's when my house started looking like the garment district".Steve Ringgenberg. "An Interview With Mike Kaluta", The Comic Times Media Showcase #5 (March 1981) P.93.
Starstruck was being created in the late 1970s period of New York City's decline, when poor musicians in Punk and free jazz were making a rising scene out of cheap rents, collective venues, and street throwaways.Tym Stevens, "Starstruck: A History...", Starstruck Deluxe Edition, 2011. Kaluta said: "You could build an entire city on the stuff the city throws away, just sitting out there". The resulting sets, designed in the style of classic science fiction serials, used Hot Wheels tracks, walkie talkies, medical splints, medicine jars full of marbles, Bingo chips, coffee lids, and plastic cups, which Kaluta glue-gunned together with help from his colleague, Fantasy illustrator Charles Vess.
The Starstruck play received its first national coverage in an article in Starlog magazine #41 in December 1980, which included an interview of Lee and Kaluta, along with Kaluta's design sketches, and stage photos by Sean Smith.
Comics The characters and stories of Starstruck have continued in comics form across multiple comic companies, but primarily Heavy Metal, Epic, Dark Horse, and IDW.
Background and creation The Starstruck play had been optioned by a producer in 1980, which bound Lee from developing any further stage versions for a year. Kaluta saw a solution but with some reluctance: "Though I did suggest Elaine do a comic book version of the play when all the rest of the rights were tied up by the then producer, I didn't want to draw the comic book".Zack Smith. "", Newsarama, June 18, 2009. Kaluta was known as illustrator of The Shadow comics for DC Comics in the early 1970s, and was hesitant to take such a big project on. They also assessed that a dialogue-heavy script on two simple sets would not translate well to the visual medium of comics. Kaluta said: "But the material, and, especially Elaine's witty approach to everything she writes set a small fire under me".
They found the solution in the backdrop. The stage play had moments where the narrator sketched the backgrounds of each character. Lee and Kaluta had worked out an elaborate backstory of the future time period, the political landscape, the pasts and futures of the characters, and many new characters not seen in the play. This scope of myth-building, inspired by the spirit of Dune and Star Trek, had been beyond their resources to stage or film. Adapting that dynamic epic to comics proved a better solution than simply adapting the play.
By 1980, creator-owned comics published by independent comics publishers were sold in an emerging network of comics stores. Lee and Kaluta took this opportunity to expand their storytelling while retaining sole ownership and control of their creative property. Lee would script and Kaluta would illustrate prequel stories that expanded the backdrop and character relationships in a lead-up to the events of the stage play. Since DC and Marvel Comics were dominated by superheroes, the first market they looked at was the mature comic magazines of Europe.
Their initial model was Heavy Metal magazine, which channeled the adult fantasy serials of France's Métal Hurlant. Lee told an interviewer: "The stuff in Heavy Metal completely blew me away and I wanted to do a play that was something like the stories they published". Kaluta was a fan of the contributing artist Moebius, particularly his kinetic line and non-linear, surprising stories.Phil Trumbo. "Lurking In the Hearts Of Men". The Comics Journal #103 (November 1985) p. 50. The Starstruck prequel series they first produced were in the template of these magazines; hallucinogenic narratives, elaborate fine art, epic backdrops, farcical humor, and adult themes, printed in serialized segments across many issues.
The first serials of Starstruck comics were printed in Spain's Ilustracion+Comix Internacional, and then America's Heavy Metal, in 1982.
Story Centuries in the future, Earth's population has been halved by a nuclear war. Humanity has emigrated out into the universe, colonizing worlds and interacting with aliens. Various regimes have held power, most recently The Great Dictator. After his overthrow by revolutionaries, a power struggle rages on between his heirs, the Bajars, and the revolutionary leaders, the Medeas. Mary Medea fakes her death and begins an elaborate plan to eventually take control and stabilize the anarchic era. Disguised as a new player, Queen Glorianna, she orchestrates a web of interconnections to achieve what will one day be called The Great Change. The story follows the various pawns and rivals in the game, in evolving stages of their lives and of the scheme, as they all eventually meet and collide. In particular the story focuses on the backstories of Galatia 9, a freedom-fighter amazon, and Brucilla The Muscle, a good-natured hothead pilot; where they came from, how they meet, and what happens because of it.
Kaluta explained: "As the books progress, the reader gets a slow reveal of the greater energies and alliances by the way they impact the lives of the happy-go-lucky space girls and boys eking out their bits of the big ball of wax".
Characters Lee and Kaluta frequently told interviewers they wanted to step away from good-vs.-evil characters to tell stories of flawed people who were too slippery for such boundaries. The writer said: "In our comic book the 'good guys' are not all good, and the 'bad guys' are not totally bad, and the characters do really stupid things. These characters all have faults. [But they] get smarter, just as people learn things in life".Peter Sanderson. "Amazons, Anarchy, And Androids". Amazing Heroes #57 (October 15, 1984) P.32. The artist said: "There is no ruler of the universe making other people dance. But there's lots of people in the comic who think they're making other people dance. And that's where the fun is, to watch the characters delude themselves".
The cast of the comics are based on the likenesses of the original stage ensemble. Lee explains that when they started the first serials: "Michael drew the characters in Starstruck to look like the actors in the original production". This included the troupe of Wild Hair Productions as well as extended friends. The writer said: "If you had walked into one of our parties, you would think you had walked into a party on Rec Station 97!"