Friday, November 1, 2013

Making a Splash: Ditko and Tanghal's Starman

What it is, Groove-ophiles! Near the end of the Groovy Age (October 1979, to be precise), DC turned Paul Levitz, Steve Ditko, and Romeo Tanghal loose on a brand-new Starman series. This Starman really was a man from the stars, a prince-in-hiding, kind of a science-fantasy riff a' la Star Wars. The strip lasted from Adventure Comics #467 through 478, and Teen Groove definitely dug it. It was the first time I'd ever experienced a Sturdy Steve series inked by another artist in the now (I'd seen a very few back issues of Captain Atom at that time), and I thought Romeo did a fab-a-mundo job on giving Ditko a stunning seventies sheen. Later, Mr. Tanghal would become a sensation inking George Perez on New Teen Titans, but those few of us Starman fans knew him when...












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6 comments:

  1. Edo BosnarNovember 1, 2013 at 6:14 AM

    Wonderful - thanks for posting this. It was in fact this series - together with the Marvel pocketbooks reprinting the first roughly 20 issues of Spider-man that came out at about the same time - that really made me appreciate Ditko's art. And the stories themselves were quite enjoyable - just good old spare-faring super-hero fun.
    I really, really, really wish DC would reprint this, preferably together with Starlin's conclusion in DC Comics Presents.

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  2. AnonymousNovember 1, 2013 at 9:15 AM

    Oh man, I love the comic space opera stuff! I didn't know much about this Starman until they tied him and Will Payton together during the James Robinson run with the Jack Knight Starman. Great stuff.

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  3. JosephSeptember 3, 2015 at 12:58 PM

    I really loved this series, although I had no idea who Ditko was at the time. I hadn't been too crazy about his work over in Legion of Super-Heroes, but had enjoyed his mystery/sci-fi stuff for DC at the time. I second having this series reprinted.

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  4. tlyoung88September 12, 2020 at 4:03 AM

    Was there a deep hidden meaning in the Starman series? Did his objectivist philosophy influence this strip?

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    Replies
    1. The Groovy AgentSeptember 12, 2020 at 8:12 AM

      None that I know of. Ditko was merely the penciler here (notice Romeo Tanghal was inking), so he was probably just trying to make a living or supplement his self-publishing. He was doing a lot of short stories for DC's sci-fi Dollar Comic Time Warp at this time, too. Paul Levitz was the writer/creator of this version of Starman, so it was mostly his vision.

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  5. tlyoung88September 16, 2020 at 7:25 PM

    So according to the DC Comics Presents finale, Mongul denied killing Clryssa, saying the accusation was technically inaccurate. Was this followed up upon, or maybe he was confessing to manslaughter?

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