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Silver Star #1
Silver Star
Jack "King" Kirby's Silver Star is collected in full color at last! Chronicling the rise of Homo-Geneticus, the New Breed of humanity that spawns both Silver Star and the nefarious Darius Brumm, Silver Star was Kirby's final creation and one of only two creator-owned projects published by Pacific Comics in the early '80s. Featuring lovingly reconstructed color work, this deluxe hardcover is a must-have for any Kirby fan!
336 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2006
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About the author
Jack Kirby
2,799 books476 followersJack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) was one of the most influential, recognizable, and prolific artists in American comic books, and the co-creator of such enduring characters and popular culture icons as the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, Captain America, and hundreds of others stretching back to the earliest days of the medium. He was also a comic book writer and editor. His most common nickname is "The King."
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 14, 2021
You can really see Kirby was inspired when he created this series as it's some of his best work. Some of that could be the production, as the colors are really well done here. (At least on the kindle version.)
This is a creator owned series published by Pacific Comics in 1983, when the independent comic market was just starting to explode. There were some really cool comic companies that came out of the 80s, such as Pacific, First, Eclipse and more.
Overall we have a scientist who experiments on unborn children in order to refine their genetics so they can survive a nuclear war. Of course the side effects end up giving them superpowers, and we end up with mostly decent people with powers, but not all are so decent.
The story is very far out as other reviewers have noted, but to me I could at least follow it which isn't always the case with some comics I've read. Overall I was impressed
This is a creator owned series published by Pacific Comics in 1983, when the independent comic market was just starting to explode. There were some really cool comic companies that came out of the 80s, such as Pacific, First, Eclipse and more.
Overall we have a scientist who experiments on unborn children in order to refine their genetics so they can survive a nuclear war. Of course the side effects end up giving them superpowers, and we end up with mostly decent people with powers, but not all are so decent.
The story is very far out as other reviewers have noted, but to me I could at least follow it which isn't always the case with some comics I've read. Overall I was impressed
July 9, 2017
If you're a fan of Jack Kirby this is a no-brainer. For those of you who are not Kirby-nuts, like myself, it might take some negotiation. Kirby was the "King" of comics, he produced thousands upon thousands of pages of comic art. With Joe Simon he created many characters, including Captain Ameica, and for all intents the teen romance genre in comics. With Stan Lee he created the Marvel Universe characters Thor, Ant-Man, Hulk, Silver Surfer, Black Panther as well as the Avengers, Fantastic Four & X-Men to name just a few. In his later years he produced this slim volume starring Silver Star.
This collection of six issues, which were originally published by Pacific Comics in the early 1980s, features variations on many concepts that Kirby used in his Asgardian heroes featuring Thor, the New Gods, Jack Kirby's OMAC: One Man Army Corps, and The Eternals Omnibus. Is it derivative of these earlier comics? Not really, instead Kirby used each series as a way of looking at these themes and concepts through different lenses. But the fact remains that Silver Star is another facet of Kirby's exploration of super beings with god like presence, powers and personalities.
Kirby's are bursts from each panel with an over abundance of energy, vitality and exuberance that twists form and perspective into non-traditional ways. This doesn't always sit well with some modern readers, but it's always important to take older works in the proper historical context. Even though Kirby's legions of fans were, for the most part, no longer reading comics at this time (and Pacific Comics had much smaller print runs and distribution than either Marvel or DC) Silver Star was an unprecedented achievement for being one of the first creator owned comics to come out. And the fact that it still exists today, in this collected edition is a tribute to its importance in both comic book history and as a prime example of Kirby's latter years in the industry.
This collection of six issues, which were originally published by Pacific Comics in the early 1980s, features variations on many concepts that Kirby used in his Asgardian heroes featuring Thor, the New Gods, Jack Kirby's OMAC: One Man Army Corps, and The Eternals Omnibus. Is it derivative of these earlier comics? Not really, instead Kirby used each series as a way of looking at these themes and concepts through different lenses. But the fact remains that Silver Star is another facet of Kirby's exploration of super beings with god like presence, powers and personalities.
Kirby's are bursts from each panel with an over abundance of energy, vitality and exuberance that twists form and perspective into non-traditional ways. This doesn't always sit well with some modern readers, but it's always important to take older works in the proper historical context. Even though Kirby's legions of fans were, for the most part, no longer reading comics at this time (and Pacific Comics had much smaller print runs and distribution than either Marvel or DC) Silver Star was an unprecedented achievement for being one of the first creator owned comics to come out. And the fact that it still exists today, in this collected edition is a tribute to its importance in both comic book history and as a prime example of Kirby's latter years in the industry.
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July 31, 2011I'm giving this four stars because Jack Kirby was a genius and there are flashes of his genius at work in this short graphic novel, but to be honest Kirby was pretty much off his game here. This is late LATE Kirby, post Devil Dinosaur and perhaps (a more fastidious fan may correct me) contemporaneous with his selling out to TV to create the Masters of the Universe. In Silver Star we find many of the problems inherent in allowing Jack Kirby to script his own stories: the Fourth World adventures had wooden dialogue and minimal characterization, but the conceptualization and execution were so brilliant that that was forgiven. The same is true of Machine Man, perhaps his last great creation. But Silver Star has all those problems, compounded by more. The purple-prose monologuing (thank you, Syndrome, for the needed neologism) is not only in places wholly incoherent but lacking even in ironic distance. The concept is an unoriginal mix of the "super soldier" serum from Captain America and the good-vs.-evil-mutants theme of the X-Men, with some of the murky apocalypticism of Kamandi and Kirby's 2001 reboot thrown in. His art, too, has gone off the rails a bit: all the men's fingers are big, rectangular sausages without fingernails, all the African-American characters have the same identical helmet-like processed hair, figures in motion have lost all their earlier Kirby suppleness, and on every page there is at least one figure that is drastically, almost hilariously misproportioned. All that having been said, there are some flashes of genius here and some lovely panoramas and the obligatory race of troglodytic mutants, and if you love Kirby you'll want this anyway, though you may want to wait for a discount on the $34.99 cover price; I got it half off and it was well worth it just to have on the shelf (well, on my son's shelf; I needed an excuse to buy it, after all).
March 15, 2009
Like a tongue-just-barely-in-cheek predecessor to Jeff Lint's "The Caterer," Silver Star features a hero who is infinitely powerful and completely insane. Unfortunately, the fate of the world hinges on his erratic behavior. Published in the early 1980s by an artist considered past his prime, Silver Star was not only timely but, as hindsight reveals, remarkably prescient.
P.S. I read the Graphite Edition.
P.S. I read the Graphite Edition.
May 20, 2020
Great production work on this volume. Nice art. Story's ... uhh ... lacking. It's a mess, honestly.
June 22, 2020
Jack Kirby’s ‘Silver Star’ was, I believe, his last work in the field of comics. The six twenty page issues are collected in this hardback volume along with covers and some other paraphernalia. There’s an introduction by David Scroggy, who was editorial director at Pacific Comics, the company which put out the original material. It started as a screenplay by Kirby and Steve Sherman but was eventually turned into comics. The production values for this volume are excellent with high quality paper and bright, clear colours.
As usual with Kirby, it centres on an interesting Science Fiction concept. Morgan Miller is ‘Homo Geneticus’, a new breed of man with the ability to mould atoms and shape them as he desires. Essentially, this means he can do anything which makes for great visuals. His nemesis is Darius Drumm, also ‘Homo Geneticus’ but a bad type who wants to rule over us mere Homo sapiens. They are both the result of pre-natal implants on a number of pregnant females by Bradford Miller, Morgan’s father, a decent man who was trying to create a species that could survive nuclear war. Darius Drumm’s father was a very bad man and the unpleasantness of his childhood turned Drumm evil.
The idea of a new breed of men, some of whom want to conquer us and some of whom want to protect us is not new. It was first done in the early sixties and Jack Kirby had a hand in it. To be fair this is X-tremely different in style and theme from that earlier work. Although both Silver Star and Darius Drumm gain allies as the story progresses, they don’t get many. It’s not a team thing.
Is it any good? Not really. The drawings are crude and the script is done in the Jack Kirby style, which has a certain je ne sais quoi but will be a jolt for those unfamiliar with it. He had full editorial control and made it a condition that nobody else could change anything. The power to put down whatever occurs to you in a story is nice but, from a customer’s point of view, it’s better to think twice sometimes. Editors exist for a reason. I’m reluctant to pan the late, great Jack Kirby, but it’s unfair to SFCrowsnest customers to pretend this is something you should rush out and buy.
However, for Kirby completists, it might be worth it. Even crude drawings retain some of the Kirby charm and the old man was still innovative in storytelling. Mixed in with the usual big pictures are pages of fifteen panels where dialogue and talking heads convey information. It’s an odd technique but shows he was still trying. To be fair, the art is not his best because by this time his eyesight was going.
Raymond Chandler said of Hemingway’s last book, ‘That when he had nothing left to throw, he threw something, he threw his heart. He didn’t just walk off the mound and weep. He adds something about those crummy second guessers the critics.’ Kirby, too, kept creating until he could do no more. My head is bowed with the shame of a crummy second-guesser but, as Stan Laurel said, ‘Honesty is the best politics’. This isn’t very good. On the other hand, there are four decades worth of great stuff from Jack Kirby that you really should rush out and buy. So there.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
As usual with Kirby, it centres on an interesting Science Fiction concept. Morgan Miller is ‘Homo Geneticus’, a new breed of man with the ability to mould atoms and shape them as he desires. Essentially, this means he can do anything which makes for great visuals. His nemesis is Darius Drumm, also ‘Homo Geneticus’ but a bad type who wants to rule over us mere Homo sapiens. They are both the result of pre-natal implants on a number of pregnant females by Bradford Miller, Morgan’s father, a decent man who was trying to create a species that could survive nuclear war. Darius Drumm’s father was a very bad man and the unpleasantness of his childhood turned Drumm evil.
The idea of a new breed of men, some of whom want to conquer us and some of whom want to protect us is not new. It was first done in the early sixties and Jack Kirby had a hand in it. To be fair this is X-tremely different in style and theme from that earlier work. Although both Silver Star and Darius Drumm gain allies as the story progresses, they don’t get many. It’s not a team thing.
Is it any good? Not really. The drawings are crude and the script is done in the Jack Kirby style, which has a certain je ne sais quoi but will be a jolt for those unfamiliar with it. He had full editorial control and made it a condition that nobody else could change anything. The power to put down whatever occurs to you in a story is nice but, from a customer’s point of view, it’s better to think twice sometimes. Editors exist for a reason. I’m reluctant to pan the late, great Jack Kirby, but it’s unfair to SFCrowsnest customers to pretend this is something you should rush out and buy.
However, for Kirby completists, it might be worth it. Even crude drawings retain some of the Kirby charm and the old man was still innovative in storytelling. Mixed in with the usual big pictures are pages of fifteen panels where dialogue and talking heads convey information. It’s an odd technique but shows he was still trying. To be fair, the art is not his best because by this time his eyesight was going.
Raymond Chandler said of Hemingway’s last book, ‘That when he had nothing left to throw, he threw something, he threw his heart. He didn’t just walk off the mound and weep. He adds something about those crummy second guessers the critics.’ Kirby, too, kept creating until he could do no more. My head is bowed with the shame of a crummy second-guesser but, as Stan Laurel said, ‘Honesty is the best politics’. This isn’t very good. On the other hand, there are four decades worth of great stuff from Jack Kirby that you really should rush out and buy. So there.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
January 12, 2026
Really happy to have snagged this piece of history. Silver Star was an awesome mix of OMAC and the Eternals, at least that is how I would describe it to someone in one sentence. Silver Star is actually a young man named Morgan Miller. A soldier that won the Silver Star by heaving a tank at the enemy one-handed during Vietnam. The reader is constantly being surprised by plot twists and to some it may seem like the ideas are being written as they came to Kirby but really this comic books was a movie screenplay first. I found the way the ideas were brought about to be interesting and fresh, very unlike what we see today in comics and honestly that is refreshing. A sign of a great is to know the rules and then know how to break them.
A few panels though did have me wondering if I had skipped a page and I would turn back only to find the information I was wondering about is explained a page or two later. Once you get used to that, you can really get into the story, and how I wish it was longer. Silver Star is the next generation of human beings, humans genetically made to survive the atomic holocaust that so many people feared in the 50's - 80's. While he seems to be the only one out there it comes out that there are more like him. And much like regular man, these super normals, as they are called are just as flawed as man. And of course, there is one super normal that wants to run the world. In doing so his idea is to find those like him and kill them. Leaving Silver Star to try and save these people before they are murdered. Some people he saves and others he is late, while some he saves but cannot convince them to join the fight again his foe simply called Drumm, Darius Drumm. There is a small bit of romance as Silver Star saves a woman that Drumm tries to kill that is also a super normal but only uses her powers, at first, to be a famous stunt woman. She does join the fight!
Of course, the art is top draw, it's Jack Kirby, and his panels are nice and smooth not hard to follow or too busy. In fact, you are treated to some full-page panels of Kirby art that you have to stop and stare at for a few moments. The story telling is choppy, but I still loved this book a lot. If I am not wrong it was one of the last books he did, if not the last. In this edition the screenplay is in the back of the book and that is cool to read, along with concept art that Jack played with before nailing down how he wanted his characters to look. A MUST own for any Jack Kirby fan. Long Live the King!
A few panels though did have me wondering if I had skipped a page and I would turn back only to find the information I was wondering about is explained a page or two later. Once you get used to that, you can really get into the story, and how I wish it was longer. Silver Star is the next generation of human beings, humans genetically made to survive the atomic holocaust that so many people feared in the 50's - 80's. While he seems to be the only one out there it comes out that there are more like him. And much like regular man, these super normals, as they are called are just as flawed as man. And of course, there is one super normal that wants to run the world. In doing so his idea is to find those like him and kill them. Leaving Silver Star to try and save these people before they are murdered. Some people he saves and others he is late, while some he saves but cannot convince them to join the fight again his foe simply called Drumm, Darius Drumm. There is a small bit of romance as Silver Star saves a woman that Drumm tries to kill that is also a super normal but only uses her powers, at first, to be a famous stunt woman. She does join the fight!
Of course, the art is top draw, it's Jack Kirby, and his panels are nice and smooth not hard to follow or too busy. In fact, you are treated to some full-page panels of Kirby art that you have to stop and stare at for a few moments. The story telling is choppy, but I still loved this book a lot. If I am not wrong it was one of the last books he did, if not the last. In this edition the screenplay is in the back of the book and that is cool to read, along with concept art that Jack played with before nailing down how he wanted his characters to look. A MUST own for any Jack Kirby fan. Long Live the King!
August 17, 2022
- a more brutal violence, more 'real' deaths, than typical Kirby, whose violence (even at its most extreme) always felt operatic and superheroic—but here scores of random bystanders are wiped out 'on-screen'
- some outdated characterizations for 1983..... ("Don't jive me, turkey.")
- but then it is an adaptation of a 1970s screenplay
- Kirby at his most cinematic (that is, restrained and filmable); this would have made a phenomenal B-movie exploitation flick
- DARIUS DRUMM is my absolute favorite Kirby villain ("Satan speaks, brothers! Deep within my brain... with silken voice... with raiment of purest silver... gleaming and... evil!")
- disappointing Angel of Death design, really visually unimaginative
- overall just a really great alternative superhero story, "super-normals" as insane omnipotent gods
- late career Kirby = Kirby at his best
- some outdated characterizations for 1983..... ("Don't jive me, turkey.")
- but then it is an adaptation of a 1970s screenplay
- Kirby at his most cinematic (that is, restrained and filmable); this would have made a phenomenal B-movie exploitation flick
- DARIUS DRUMM is my absolute favorite Kirby villain ("Satan speaks, brothers! Deep within my brain... with silken voice... with raiment of purest silver... gleaming and... evil!")
- disappointing Angel of Death design, really visually unimaginative
- overall just a really great alternative superhero story, "super-normals" as insane omnipotent gods
- late career Kirby = Kirby at his best
April 29, 2021
Well. That was... something. This is another recommendation from my brother. It was a weird one, but Kirby's art is so iconic that I couldn't help but enjoy it. The dialogue, though... Oof. The story was interesting, an early exploration of genetic manipulation and its potential consequences. It goes about as well as you'd expect, leading to a bunch of great action panels and more than a few explosions.
I'm still stuck on the weird, apocalyptic, culty tones, though, haha.
I'm still stuck on the weird, apocalyptic, culty tones, though, haha.
October 29, 2025
Kirby continued to do great things even into the 80s. The art here is still great. The story moves at a blistering pace with a lot of random elements - I wish he'd slow down and let us appreciate the scenery.
August 4, 2018
Busting at the seams with energy and enthusiasm, the story is a little thin and mildly incomprehensible, but the art is first rate. Kirby remains the King.
November 9, 2023
Not Peak Kirby, but Fun Kirby.
April 18, 2022
This hardcover collection looks great! The story is a little wonky and unfinished, but worth it for the visuals.
February 20, 2012
This is uninhibited Kirby. The story of Morgan Miller, the first of a race "Homo Geneticus"-- a race of superman engineered to survive a nuclear holocaust. Along the way, Kirby sets up a world that slowly gives way to this new phase in human evolution. This series, though only six issues has great potential and has given rise to a new series from Dynamite Entertainment. Thank God, as these characters are so incredible, they deserve more than the six issues they were consigned to for so long.
March 5, 2008
this one was kinda weird. i liked it but it's definitely lesser kirby. couldn't help think though, that if this had been reprinted on newsprint style paper - like the fourth world omnibus stuff & like the end pages - i would have dug it a whole lot more. slick paper, modern coloring, no thanks. still, it's got that kirby poetry - "What a dude! Got a mind shaped like a corkscrew! He's like all scars inside...and...and bleeding wounds!" - that you just gotta love.
February 26, 2022
An interesting take on super heroes being let loose on an unsuspecting world, but it starts to wander into some philosophical ramblings/debates that derail the story and the bad guy is a watered down Darkseid.
Maybe if had been longer, Kirby could have built up some the story threads better.
Did like Big Masai and thought he should have gotten his own comic.
Maybe if had been longer, Kirby could have built up some the story threads better.
Did like Big Masai and thought he should have gotten his own comic.
February 12, 2016
I read these in the original comic format when they came out. Jack Kirby changed his style in the early 1970s and I fell out of being a fan of his art and stories, overall I never could seem to get into the books. I had hoped he had changed again when these new comics came out but alas it was not so. If you are a Kirby fan then these are recommended
June 8, 2021
With this series, Jack Kirby once again demonstrates his unbridled skill at dynamic action and mind-boggling concepts. While somewhat remniscent of earlier works, this series is no less enjoyable for it.
As a footnote, look into “Kirby Genesis” from Dynamite Entertainment. That series incorporates much of Kirby’s later work; Silver Star, Dragonsbane and Captain Victory.
As a footnote, look into “Kirby Genesis” from Dynamite Entertainment. That series incorporates much of Kirby’s later work; Silver Star, Dragonsbane and Captain Victory.
January 8, 2010
Apparently in his latter years, Kirby made comic books in the style of Jack Kerouac. It almost works, but Kirby needed an editor (as do most comic artists) to make this more coherent. Still, the art amazes me on every page.
Read
August 4, 2011Beautiful fevered madness.
Want to read
March 25, 2016Recopilatorio con uno de los últimos trabajos de Kirby.
March 1, 2012
Loved it!
July 16, 2016
As stunning as it is incomprehensible.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews