Starstruck

Starstruck #1

by Elaine Lee, Michael Kaluta (Artist)

The classic galaxy-spanning comic series has been a renowned stage play, audio drama, and now, the setting for a tabletop RPG actual play series!

Dimension 20: A Starstruck Odyssey brings the universe of Starstruck to the popular TTRPG actual play show, Dropout.tv's Dimension 20. Created and hosted by writer Elaine Lee's son, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Dimension 20: A Starstruck Odyssey is an 18-episode adventure that brings all of the chaos, wit, and heart of the Starstruck comic series to the world of RPGs. Featuring the cast of previous Dimension 20 seasons such as Fantasy High and The Unsleeping City , A Starstruck Odyssey will begin airing in January 2022.

This comprehensive Starstruck collection presents the material on which the Dimension 20 season is based in a grand, oversized edition. This beautiful book features some of the finest art ever put to paper by artist Michael Kaluta, including many pages that were never printed in the original run. Additionally, Kaluta painstakingly added approximately 20% of art to nearly every page to ensure the aspect ratio of the comic would be consistent and correct. The end result is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced—a head-spinning, synapse-snapping, soul-searing ride to a world like no other… the world of Starstruck !

Collects all 13 issues of the completely remastered series by Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta! That's 360-pages of Starstruck and Galactic Girl Guides adventures, covers, pin-ups, glossary, postcards, and so much more.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Fiction, Humor, Fantasy, Comic Book

360 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2011

Reviews

[Esme N · Rating 4 out of 5]

dimension 20 girlie always <3

[Dominick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this was disappointing (though 2 stars may be a tad harsh). Kaluta has an amazing sinuous, sensual line, and a lot of the pages look great, but as many are overly busy and hard to parse. As for the story, . . . well, there isn't one, really. This is cobbled together from various earlier graphic novels and series (and a few extras from heaven knows where), and it ultimately just doesn't add up to a coherent package. The "main" story seems like a prologue (it actually IS a prologue, to something that never was a comic--a play--which we learn from the essay near the end), but even taken on its own terms it's a farrago of narratives that seem as if they should intertwine, but keeping track of who is who (except for the oddly-named Brucilla the Muscle)--not helped by the fact that a lot of them look a lot alike--and what the heck is going on is pretty much a lost cause. Then, in the middle, we get an encyclopedia of characters, places, etc. that you would think would clarify matters, but it actually doens't. The entries seem to deal mostly with background and side topics, not with anything actually central. Then we get a series of shorts set prior to the first narrative--a sort of "Lil Archie"-style space opera about young Brucilla (I say "Lil Archie" because her short red hair and freckles really made me think of Lil Archie. . . ) and her sister Intergalactic Girl Guides--or whatever they're called (I finished the book this morning, and things are fuzzy already) engaged in what I assume are supposed to be comic ructions (oddly reminiscent of the execrable pod race in The Phantom Menace. Then we get a few pages of jokey sort-of-science project how-to strips parodying educational comics and featuring a couple of the characters form the "Lil Archie"-escue stories, with no discernible reason how this stuff connects to any of the rest of it, THEN, finally, we get an essay that tells the twisted tale of Starstruck without adding much in the way of elucidation vis a vis what it's all about, though making large claims for the genius of the work (better than Watchmen! Better than The Dark Knight Returns! Uh hunh). Most frustrating is the lack of any clear publication history, indicating what originally came when, where it was printed, and how it has been modified for inclusion here (some stuff was coloured, evidently--and the rest of it looks like it has been recoloured; some pages had the art modified to fit the page shape for this book, evidently); even what I assume is a cover gallery from various earlier iterations is not so labelled. Lots of mind-blowing art, a plethora of mind-boggling space operaesque tropes and ideas (sexbots! a gateway between universes! intergalactic intrigue! bizarre aliens!), but, really, not a whole heck of a lot in the way of coherence. If you like comics that look nice and have a SF vibe, and you're not too concerned about stories that make any sense (or, to put it another way, if you were/are a Heavy Metal fan), this might be your cup of tea. Otherwise, proceed with caution.

[Mat Tait · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense, free-wheeling, absurdist space opera which requires close reading, not just because of the coherently incoherent plot, but to enjoy the intricate artwork and multiple visual asides, many of which prefigure plot elements to come and are an essential part of the narrative.
I have vague memories of reading some of this back in the eighties and being largely mystified, although entranced by Kaluta's beautiful art-nouveau-by-way-of-Moebius inflected artwork, and I have to say it makes only slightly more sense now, but that's definitely part of its charm. This is a book that's going to reward multiple re-readings - a rare enough thing.
If I have any complaints they'd be that Lee Moyer's colouring at times overpowers Kaluta's delicate linework, and that the next edition in the (never-ending?) series is likely a long way off...

[Jonathan Combs · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there were a status call re-reading instead of read I'd put it in this category. There is so much to enjoy about this--the story that keeps looping around itself, the interconnection of the main characters (most of them strong and/or brainy women, the wonderful drawing (think Moebius/Druillet). Then there are the details such as the Jars with the embossed trademarks, the language and measures of time--marbecs, martrons, malton units, the fully realized universe, and the characters themselves--the cruel incestuous Ver-Loona, tiny but tough Galatia 9, the manipulative Ronnie Lee Ellis, freedom fighter Mary Medea, and the incomparable Brucilla "the Muscle."

The humor is sometimes brash, sometimes subtle. The focus is both on the personal and the multiverse. The comedy is mixed with tragedy and the action is pretty much non-stop. This is not a quick read--there are usually several streams of thought, quotations from books (some of which are real), and minute details that you may miss on the first read. And it's 260 pages.

The story, which was first published in the early eighties, has been updated and added to over the years and it feels fresh and inventive. It certainly deserves to be on any shelf that includes Watchmen, Maus, The Dark Knight Returns, Fun Home, V for Vendetta, Ghost World, etc.

Unlike many graphic novels which use the backmatter to add page counts to the book with alternate covers, scripts, character sketches or other types of filler, the last section of the book is as readable as the first. There are informational sections which flesh out the story and suggest a future influenced by the characters, drawings of some of the spacecraft, and best of all, the "Brucilla the Muscle Galactic Girl Guide" a graphic novel within a graphic novel detailing the early days of Brucilla with the GGG, a sort of Fagin's gang with uniforms and cookie sales and petty larceny.

If you love graphic novels, read this. Love it or hate it, it's monumental in every sense of the word.


PS--One review complained of "overt "adult" sexuality" and I couldn't disagree more. I think that, similar to a lot of Terry Moore's work, Starstruck is sexy without being overtly sexual. Compared to most adult graphic novels this one contains little nudity, no sex scenes, mostly mild language, no racial or sexual slurs (unless you consider "neuter-booter" a slur) and the sexual aggressors are, in most cases, female. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to anyone old enough to see an R rated movie on their own.

PPS--the date I finished the book? Never-I'm still re-reading.

[Victor The Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

An outlandishly pretty sci-fi acid trip with a little sexuality on the side unclear of who or what the story is about, but a strange way of storytelling. B- (67%/Decent)

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art is beautiful but I have no idea what's going on. I hope that there are some sort of annotations available for when I inevitably read it again.

[Nancy Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starstruck first impinged my consciousness as a comic doled out in dribs and dabs in the pages of Heavy Metal issues I liberated from my brother, where it stood out like a sore thumb with its Mucha-esque art and broad cast of female characters. The plot, if it could be called a plot, was convoluted and oblique, seeming to center on the family machinations of two space-faring dynasties, while throwing out hints of a wider, and wilder, universe like handfuls of confetti. In its many incarnations as comic book, graphic novel, side media and collections, the universe became richer and the plot more clear, but never was it spoon-fed to the reader. Like the real world, the reader was confronted by chaos and had to impose her own meaning and order on it.

Given its checkered history, it's not surprising (although it is disappointing) that tracking down the full story in print today is nearly impossible. This edition collects 300+ pages of story and art, but frustratingly stops about halfway through the main storyline. (I believe this is continued in the collected "Old Proldiers Never Die" volume.) The skeinful of dangling plot threads may well leave a new reader saying "What the hell just happened?"

This volume also collects the Galactic Girl Guide comics - a kind of "Our Gang" set in a futuristic Kansas farm - and various glossaries and histories written by the in-story characters, as well as full page reproductions of the cover art from the serialized comic books.

Despite my disappointment at having to continue my search for the rest of the story, I still give this collection five stars. Starstruck was revolutionary in the 1980s and there still ain't nothing like it.

[Memento Maryn ౨ৎ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this, but I cannot in good faith give it more than one star for a very simple reason: I’ve no idea what I just read.

The way the pages are laid out was very difficult to follow, and the dialogue doesn’t make it any better - there are accents used that are barely decipherable (for example: 'l'tul suguh britchiz wood'n do dis t'ole'), which isn’t a very pleasant experience. The story? Couldn’t tell you what it’s about. The parts where the characters are introduced are the most logical, easy to follow parts. Anything else was a confusing ‘what-am-I-looking-at’ ordeal. I really did enjoy 'The Right Bait', which I think is the best part.

I may simply not be accustomed to American comics, but I really wanted to give this a try because I love the accompanying Dimension 20 campaign set in the same universe. All I can say is - you really don’t need this source material to enjoy that show, and probably watching that first will help you understand this collection a bit better, rather than the other way around.

[Max Rizzuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

what an unbelievably fun, hijinksy, well written book! so much more fun since i’m watching a starstruck odyssey (the d&d campaign on dimension 20 run by Elaine Lee’s (who wrote starstruck) son, Brennan Lee Mulligan! what a family!). god i love this book

[Petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It's a tough galaxy but somebody's gotta live in it. It might as well be YOU!"

I can tell already that Starstruck is going to grow on me the more I think about it and on a reread. The world that Lee and Kaluta depict is so endlessly creative and interesting. Set one hundred and fifty years after the collapse of a galactic empire, Starstruck doesn't go the Star Wars route and just say that everything was good afterwards; instead the galaxy has entered AnarchEra, a period of chaos as almost everyone fights and schemes over who will be in charge next. The Bajar family, the wealthy scions of the Dread Dictator who still control slices of the galaxy through their corporations Crown & Sceptre and UFTP, the descendants of legendary revolutionary Molly Medea, the Cosmic Veil (Cloistered Order of the Goddess Uncaring), all of these interesting characters and factions are setting their own plans into motion and our protagonists Galatia 9 and Brucilla the Muscle are just sort of stuck in the middle.

Something I love about the world is how much art plays a heavy part in it. Reading this and reflecting on it a bit made me realise that art is almost forgotten about in most pieces of science fiction, so I think it's really interesting how through both mundane things like Galatia 9's amateur poetry and Ronnie Lee Ellis' sci-fi novels and weirder things like the Guernican Art Squad (the most dangerous performance art troupe in the galaxy!), art plays as big a role in AnarchEra as it does in the real world.

Speaking of art, Kaluta's art is excellent. It's so colourful and psychedelic and there's so much happening on every panel, it's really great to look at.

Unfortunately, I think the big issue with Starstruck is that it's a lot of setup without much payoff. It was cancelled after I think nine issues and it was written as a prequel to a sci-fi play that Lee had previously written, and because of that it just sort of abruptly ends after Galatia and Brucilla meet and escape from Rec Station 97 together. While what's there is fun, it's abrupt ending and lack of payoff is a bit disappointing because it'd be interesting to see everything actually kick off.

[Haley The Caffeinated Reader]

https://thecaffeinatedreader.com/2025...

If you ever wanted to know what a drug trip might feel like while never having done drugs, like myself, and just set it all in space...Might I suggest this? And you know what? I think I’d reread this again. It was fun, unique, the art was gorgeous, and it was just weird enough to keep me invested.

This was another read for the Goodbye Comics club I'm part of which meets at our awesome local comic book store Hello Comics.

Overall it was so quirky and so fascinating that I enjoyed it but I also was like 'this is ridiculous' so be forewarned. This could very much not be your cup of tea or you will end up just sitting back and enjoying the ride.

I did go ahead and read the second Volume and pretty much this review can be applied to it too just add in the fact that the plot for that one is definitely more solid and cohesive (and coherent lolol).

Because this left me in such a 'what did I just read?' moment, I didn't give it a rating but I hope this review might help you decide to read (or not read) it! So, no cups of coffee from me, only chaos.

[Grace]

DNF ~25%

The world is super interesting, but I just felt super lost. I know this is a collection of all 13 issues of this comic series, but it seems like the issues are just set in the same 'verse and not really a "series", and I found myself really wanting/needing a through-line. Especially because where the issues start/stop isn't at all clear in the kindle version, so it feels like they *should* be connected, and suddenly you're thrown into something totally different with zero context. Didn't quite work for me, but I think that is partially the fault of the format, so not rating.

[Jeb Jeb Jebby Jeborah Jane Jyiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any review that says this book was hard to follow was either high or didn’t read the whole book.
Easy to follow if you don’t need your stories spoon fed to you. Unapologetically in its own world and when you catch up to it, it’s amazing! Wish there was more!

[Lia Koering · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m sooooo devastated that this ended. Starstruck comics comeback when???? I miss my girls. I need more😕

[Mary Overton]

Portraits of 3 inter-galactically powerful women from a history by Dwannyun of Griivarr (jilted sweetheart of Brucilla the Muscle, a 4th powerful woman, if mostly in the physical realm):
'It all has to do with two dynastic families whose offspring found themselves on opposite sides of the rebellion that toppled the Incorporated Elysian Republic (which was neither heavenly, nor a republic), then went on to struggle for supremacy in the chaotic cycles of the aptly named AnarchEra. ... the Bajar and Medea families ...

'Much has been written about the so-called "missing years" of Molly [Medea] the Younger (AKA Galatia 9), though much of this is pure speculation. What is known is that Molly, for some years after leaving home, attached herself to one lost cause after another, often running into problems with the authorities in whichever arm of the galaxy she happened to be stirring up trouble ... her book of political poetry, entitled "Rhymes Time Nine" and written under the name Galatia 9, "Freelance Fighter and Poet Militant."'

'Much has been written about the "Last Will + Testament of Mary Medea" and it is generally agreed that this document was the catalyst (along with the establishment of the Glorianan religion) that spurred the Miners of the Mitochondrian Krystal Belt to create a permanent government that would unify the belt. The will was witnessed by Mary Medea's personal assistant, an andromedicone droid of the AL line. This is interesting, as it was the participation of Miz Medea and the other human allies who fought alongside cyberforms in the Droid Wars, that led to legal rights being extended to independent thinking androids (thus making the aforementioned witnessing possible).

'The enormously successful [novel] "Mind Spiders From the Planet Xenon" and its various spin-off lasarounds and holoshows, trading cards and action figures, gave [author] Ronnie Lee Ellis [originally named Indira Lucrezia Bajar] the wherewithal to do whatever she pleased. And what she pleased was to interfere in the lives of certain powerful members of the Medea and Bajar clans.'

[Tripp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This vaults into the top rank of comics I consider the best the medium has to offer, very near my all-time favorite, Love & Rockets, and passing such high-water works as 1986's Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, but doing what those two excellent books did earlier and even better. Writer Elaine Lee and artist Michael Kaluta manage the most complex world-building I've ever seen in comics, and do it without the use of explanatory and expository text and dialogue. Remarkable achievement. In part, this is because Lee trusts her readers to be observant of detail, smart, and willing to re-read as needed to fit the pieces of this star-spanning puzzle of a story together. Lee is also able to spare the reader info dumps in dialogue because of her work detailing the lore of this universe by means of diaries, military recruiting posters, galactic trading cards, religious and factional slogans, mantras, sales pitches, and scriptures, excerpts from in-world texts such as Lady Scooter Jean's Ordering AnarchEra, all of it a fabulous embroidering of meta-fictional works that weaves throughout the story.

[Nore · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know this comic has something of a cult classic status, but... it just didn't do it for me. I spent the entire time confused by what was going on - it took me a second read-through to figure out what the plot was. Too much extraneous detail, and that's coming from someone who enjoys ridiculous worldbuilding! I also don't have much patience for over-the-top silliness or political machinations, which Starstruck is rife with, so this isn't a series that would draw me in normally even if it weren't as complex as it was. I will say that I enjoyed the characters. Galatia 9 and Brucilla will have a place in my heart for a long time, even if I didn't enjoy their world. The feminist themes and the treatment of sexuality and gender were top-notch.

[Erin Polgreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This comic was a precursor to the Swamp Thing and Sandman-fueled adult comics boom. It's really phenomenally illustrated, experimental in style, and has a loose, sprawly narrative that's pretty charming. There's a little too much "special edition" padding, but the touched up coloring is incredible. Starstruck is really, really worth a read, especially if you like smart, typology-defying female characters.

[Adam Styles · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s a very real chance that this is one of the most intricate and intelligent graphics novels ever, and I’m just stupid.

That being said, I found it incomprehensibly dense and impossible to follow.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t even take solace in the art, as it is not my style at all.

[Fireena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't hate this, but it certainly wasn't even remotely enjoyable. Finished not 5 minutes ago, and I couldn't tell you a thing that happened or even a single characters name or description. It just felt like a mess of disjointed vignettes.

[Addib · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where’s the plinth??

[B.E.N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series of Starstruck should not be confused with the original, 1980s series. The 1980s series has 6 issues, while this series has 13 issues. Distinguishing them can be difficult from titles and publication dates alone, as several publishers and magazines (Marvel, IDW, Dark Horse and Heavy Metal) have all had a hand in publishing some or all of Starstruck at different times, and some of the different editions of the original 1980s series maybe contain some differences in extra content or edits, although I have only read a single version of each limited run, so I am not able to explicitly mention details.

This series, I believe, would have been initially known under the monicker "The Expanding Universe", or at least part of it would have been. Some or all of it would have been initiated in the 90s, but the full contents, to my understanding, was not published until 2009.

In terms of story, the Expanding Universe storyline is essentially a prequel to the 1980s series, which in turn was a prequel to the original Starstruck stage play.

Structurally and narratively, the story essentially sets up how the members of the feuding Bajar and Madea families are set up into their respective positions at the start of the original comic book series, and it does so by following them through their life, from childhood through adulthood and until they all converge around Recreation Station 97, which is the fulcrum of the original comic run.

The series appears to me to attempt to explain a lot more than its predecessor did, with specific introductions made in both a faux-historical and faux-encyclopedic fashion to explain slang terms, which character is which and so on. Personally, I have to admit that I found these segments to be a hindrance rather than a help, not so much in clarity, but in pacing, as they are very wordy and take time working through. I wish some of the explanations had been more organically worked into the narrative itself, but I am not able to tell exactly how that should have been achieved.

In simple terms, the story, while long and twisty, amusing and confusing as all Starstruck stories seem to be, is basically the coming-of-age stories of primarily Galatia 9 and Brucilla the Muscle. In additon, the Bajar twins (Kalif and Ronnie Lee Ellis) as well as Galatia's half sister and several other supporting characters. The stories themselves are an amusing, irreverent romp that frequently satirizes religiosity, media, militarism and popular culture, while never taking itself too seriously.

This run of the comics feature A LOT more worldbuilding than the original run, and this does help ground the setting somewhat, and makes the motivations of the characters just a little bit more explicable and understandable, and it also makes it somewhat easier to distinguish several similar-looking characters from each other.

Unfortunately, the team-up of the series main characters, Galatia 9 and Brucilla the Muscle only happens towards the very end, making their chemistry and cameraderie feel somewhat lacking. In the original series, one gets the impression that these have been working together for a long time, a notion that this series dispels.

Of note is the supporting series "The Galactic Girl Guides" which is a "Li'l Rascals"-style strip that deals with Brucilla's childhood and attempting to join the aforementioned girl guides. While it is primarily comedic, it does feature character exploration, and worldbuilding, and supports the main narrative overall. It is also, if possible, even more irreverant and zany than the main narrative.

[Paul Hamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this graphic novel as a gift years ago after putting it on a wishlist based on a recommendation so old I no longer remember who recommended it to me or under what context/circumstance. I tried to read it when I first got my copy but found it confusing and not what I was looking for at the time so I set it down and meant to get back to it.

After seeing it used as a basis for a new actual play tabletop RPG show under the series banner Dimension 20, I remembered I had the book and figured I'd give it another go.

So here's the thing with me and Starstruck: on paper, I love it. It's wild, it's sexy, it's funny, it's one of those "let's put every idea ever into this thing and see what happens", it does the thing where it drops you into a complex world with little fanfare and trusts the reader to orient themselves, it's got an astounding level of world-building, word-play is rampant, the characters are memorable, the art is absolutely fantastic...

But I really, really struggled to enjoy this. I pored over the pages of this thing, reading all the included extras, trying to get a sense of the plot and intrigue, putting in a good amount of work to understand what was going on. But I was never able to get past the fact that it felt relentless like things were just happening for inscrutable reasons and despite my best efforts I was only able to make it through by just shrugging and saying, "okay I guess we're doing that now." Despite spending months with the book, I couldn't really even begin to summarize even the highest level plot points. I can barely keep straight the principal characters or even be sure I've identified which ones were principals and which were just extended cameos.

It's frenetic, it's imaginative, it's funny and probably even funnier if you ever have any context for what's going on but short of seeking out some kind of wiki to encapsulate the overall plot, I just couldn't make heads or tails of most of this. It's frustrating because in a way this feels like a negative review of my own brain, like I dislike this just because I'm too moronic or graphic novel illiterate to pick up what the creators were putting down but at some point all I can do is describe my experience with this book. And that description is, I wanted very much to like this but I just couldn't, instead finding it over-dense, unfocused, and deeply frustrating.

I did a quick scan of other reviews during this writing and apparently the incoherency is either a side effect of the collation from previously published material or the point, depending on who you ask. And I guess the essay included toward the back of the volume actually is supposed to be the part that actually pulls it altogether (by the time I read that I was wondering if it wasn't part of some elaborate literary prank and meant to be taken satirically, but it could be that actually all of those things are true?). In any case, I can see that this might be the kind of thing I might come to change my mind about. Others have said this rewards multiple re-reads as the narrative is constructed in overlapping cycles and though I am generally loathe to re-read things often (or at all in some cases) maybe this book will stick with me and I'll keep returning to it until I come to find a fresh appreciation for it. I'd be okay if that were the case.

But in all probability I'll remember it as a very strange experiment in the form and remind myself that sometimes being too clever for your own good is indistinguishable from not being clever at all.

[Alex Sarll]

A sprawling intergalactic saga which started in Heavy Metal, and it shows, both in the amount of flesh on show and in the way one always feels a little flung into the story, a bit uncertain of what exactly is going on. Freudian psychodrama jostles up against jolly japes with huge body counts, repurposed old jokes with sense-of-wonder SF, and whenever I thought I'd got a vague handle on what was going on we'd switch to some other characters entirely. In some ways it feels more like snapshots of a world than a story in any traditional sense, but while that's not necessarily a criticism (it's true of John Brunner's great near future quartet), here I never quite felt I clicked. Extremely pretty art, though, art nouveau meets absurdism - which kept me going to the halfway point, where it finally starts to make sense how the various bits relate to each other, and something like a core plot surfaces...just in time for the story to stop, in favour of 20-odd pages of encyclopaedia-type material on the world, then some excerpts from other in-world books. After that, the sequentials do resume, but it's a prequel, albeit a fairly entertaining one about how one of the leads came to join the surprisingly powerful and unscrupulous Galactic Girl Guides. The overall effect is somewhere between Halo Jones and Prophet, except not quite as good as either; I certainly don't regret reading it, but I remain puzzled as to why it should be Mike Carey's favourite comic ever. Not that he seems to be alone in that; there's also an afterword which explains some of the bittiness of the reading experience (it began life as the prologue and supplementary material for a 1980 off-Broadway play), while also claiming that Starstruck is better than Watchmen or Sandman. So evidently if it caught you right, at the right moment, it hit hard. For the rest of us...not so much.

[Avery LuBell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to dive into this book after watching the D20 campaign. Feminist zany space cowboys?! What's not to love?!?!

Well, a lot, turns out :/.

You're thrown into the 'verse without the benefit of a Star Wars text crawl to summarize the gist of what's happening. That's fine, that's a choice. But the PoV jumps around before you have a chance to get immersed in the setting, or to get attached to any one character. Unlike, say, Cowboy Bebop, which also throws you into the 'verse with very little context, but is obvious about who the protagonists are and what they want. Reading Starstruck, I didn't understand what was happening, who was important, or why I should care.

But I gave the book a chance, and tried to stick with it despite my confusion... and couldn't stomach it; I had to DNF halfway through. The characters were all casually incestuous in a way that I didn't understand (unlike, say, Game of Thrones, where the politics and relationships were meant to mirror actual history). I didn't see the big swing for femininity when every female character was introduced in relation to some dude who wanted to grope them. Final nail in the coffin - and I admit this one was a matter of personal preference - I didn't like the art style. It was sneering, lumpy, often confusing... It was unpleasant to look at, and when your media is VISUAL, that's a big problem.

In summary, I don't think I would have understood or appreciated even half this book if I hadn't watched D20 first. But the comic only made me pine for the simplicity of the show: To have an obvious cast of player-characters, and a GM who explains the lore. Better an RPG than a comic, is my takeaway.

[Brendan Hough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye read 2025
7.5/10 This story is scatterbrains crazy. Interesting in bits, utterly boring in others. Lots of background info in this edition if you like that sort of thing. I was going into reading this thinking deluxe meant all of it, nope. Supposedly next would be to read “the luckless, the abandoned and the forsaken. Maybe i’ll get it someday but it was overall a meh story scattered with great moments. The story goes for a bit less than half the book. The rest is aforementioned background info. The latter half delves into brucilla’s youth which was ok i guess. The colour art is gorgeous. The layout is annoying to read, with heavy boring text. Think of it as being at a train station and every conversation is written out for you to read. If you want woman heroes this book has them (and bad ladies too). I carried the book standing upright in my backpack for half a day and four pages fell out, so not of the highest build quality. The main characters are fun as well as the locations they go to.

[Nicolas Lontel]

Visuellement incroyable avec énormément de recherches visuelles et de construction de monde (world building), une panoplie de personnages, de situations, d'absurde et de loufoque, mais ultimement un peu mélangeant et confus à la lecture, on a beaucoup de mal à comprendre ce qu'il se passe dans la première partie et l'action se déroule toujours très rapidement.

La deuxième partie de l'anthologie avec les Galactic Girl Guides est beaucoup plus compréhensible et est relativement distincte du reste du récit et fait peut-être un meilleur point d'entrée accessible et compréhensible dans cet univers.

C'était définitivement une découverte intéressante, mais il faut s'accrocher et aimer la BD expérimentale.

[Jared Millet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starstruck strikes me as a kind of feminist Heavy Metal. Visually it's fantastic, with some outstanding, painfully detailed work by Michael Kaluta and Charles Vess. But narratively it's an incoherent mess. Aside from the clownish "Brucilla the Muscle," it's unclear who any of the characters are, what they want, what the story actually is, or why we should care. The comic is amusing if you let each individual issue wash over you in a tide of stream-of-consciousness outer space wackiness, but in the end I just feel confused and deeply distrustful of Girl Scouts.

[Deshawn Vasquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to read this prior to watching Dimension 20: A Starstruck Odyssey and I do think this is one of the most beautifully illustrated works I've ever read and an expansive, rich universe years before milestones like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen or The Sandman would further the medium. BUT, there are growing pains. The book is often too tense for its own good and can be hard to follow. It's worth really taking the time to chip away at it for a while like I did rather than crush it in a session or two. Focus in and just let it wash over you.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art is honestly brilliant with amazing colouring as well but I think (maybe I'm just too thick?) it's so hard to follow the plot that this was a proper struggle to finish. Some characters are really memorable and cool like Galatia 9, Brucilla and Erotica Ann but the way the story is told in small vignettes that have SO much terminology and other things going on simultaneously I found myself reading most of this thinking "Maybe if I just keep going it'll all make sense in a little bit" more often than not. Kinda bummed out, wanted to love this more than I did.