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Starhenge #1-6
Starhenge, Book 1: The Dragon and the Boar
Revered creator Liam Sharp cuts loose on his visually stunning masterpiece, Starhenge: The Dragon and the Boar.
A future Merlin travels to 5th century Britain to prevent monstrous time-travelling killer robots robbing the universe of magic! Amber Weaver's lively present-day narrative reveals how she becomes drawn into a war across time...
'The Terminator' meets 'The Green Knight' in this enthralling epic inspired by the Arthurian sagas!
Collects Starhenge: The Dragon and the Boar #1-6.
A future Merlin travels to 5th century Britain to prevent monstrous time-travelling killer robots robbing the universe of magic! Amber Weaver's lively present-day narrative reveals how she becomes drawn into a war across time...
'The Terminator' meets 'The Green Knight' in this enthralling epic inspired by the Arthurian sagas!
Collects Starhenge: The Dragon and the Boar #1-6.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 2, 2024
3 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Liam Sharp
408 books58 followersLiam Sharp is a British artist, writer and publisher. His debut work started in the late 1980s drawing Judge Dredd for 2000AD. Since then he has worked for numerous comic publishers including Marvel UK, Marvel Comics, DC comics, Image, Dynamite Comics, Verotick as well as many others. He has published his first novel. He has worked with advertising campaigns as well as design work and produced art for various magazines. He has worked on designs for various movies including Lost in Space, Small Soldiers and the animated series Batman Beyond.
In 2004 Liam established MamTor™ Publishing with his wife Christina. In October 2011, Liam Sharp co-founded Madefire with Ben Wolstenholme and Eugene Walden, in Berkeley, CA, and is the company's CCO.
He is currently at work on a comic series with his wife called Cap Stone. He also has a deviant art page located at http://liamsharp.deviantart.com
In 2004 Liam established MamTor™ Publishing with his wife Christina. In October 2011, Liam Sharp co-founded Madefire with Ben Wolstenholme and Eugene Walden, in Berkeley, CA, and is the company's CCO.
He is currently at work on a comic series with his wife called Cap Stone. He also has a deviant art page located at http://liamsharp.deviantart.com
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
February 1, 2024
This was a hard book to rate.
On one hand, the art was incredible, some of the best I've ever seen in any comic.
On the other, the writing is probably the worst I've ever seen in any comic.
I've never seen such a disparity.
When I say the writing is bad, I mean the dialogue is awful. Grating, irritating, tedious, and annoying are all words that are too kind for some of the abysmal dialogue written in Starhenge. It's like if you asked a boomer what a 14-year-old girl sounds like, then had them write it out for 120 pages.
While intriguing, the overall plot ultimately doesn't come out much better. The reader is supposed to get a sense that there are complicated webs, layers, and timelines to the plot, supposedly making it vast and grand. I do admire the expansive scope attempted with this story, but it all collapses under its own weight, leaving just a giant, jumbled mess.
Not sure if I have the heart to pick up the next issue in this series. The art and the strange, vast plot make Starhenge a truly unique experience. But I'd have to suffer through more of that dialogue...bleh.
On one hand, the art was incredible, some of the best I've ever seen in any comic.
On the other, the writing is probably the worst I've ever seen in any comic.
I've never seen such a disparity.
When I say the writing is bad, I mean the dialogue is awful. Grating, irritating, tedious, and annoying are all words that are too kind for some of the abysmal dialogue written in Starhenge. It's like if you asked a boomer what a 14-year-old girl sounds like, then had them write it out for 120 pages.
While intriguing, the overall plot ultimately doesn't come out much better. The reader is supposed to get a sense that there are complicated webs, layers, and timelines to the plot, supposedly making it vast and grand. I do admire the expansive scope attempted with this story, but it all collapses under its own weight, leaving just a giant, jumbled mess.
Not sure if I have the heart to pick up the next issue in this series. The art and the strange, vast plot make Starhenge a truly unique experience. But I'd have to suffer through more of that dialogue...bleh.
May 11, 2023
'Starhenge' features undeniably beautiful and rich artwork, illustrating a complex, highly imaginative, and occasionally convoluted retelling of Arthurian legend.
I think part of me was expecting something akin to a more modern take on "Camelot 3000," what with its blending of the Arthur story with alien invasion. The actual result digs far deeper into the mythology and reaches much farther into the imaginative possibilities of the story. The artistic style also casts a wide net, some parts using almost photorealistic paintings while others go hard for the traditional comic-book feel.
What you get with 'Starhenge' is an ambitious tale beautifully presented, both familiar and adventurous in scope, which mostly delivers and only occasionally gets lost in its own complexities. It'll be interesting to see where they take it next.
I think part of me was expecting something akin to a more modern take on "Camelot 3000," what with its blending of the Arthur story with alien invasion. The actual result digs far deeper into the mythology and reaches much farther into the imaginative possibilities of the story. The artistic style also casts a wide net, some parts using almost photorealistic paintings while others go hard for the traditional comic-book feel.
What you get with 'Starhenge' is an ambitious tale beautifully presented, both familiar and adventurous in scope, which mostly delivers and only occasionally gets lost in its own complexities. It'll be interesting to see where they take it next.
May 15, 2023
I can always count on Image Comics to deliver great stories with amazing artwork, and Starhenge certainly lives up to that. This volume collects issues 1-6. Here, Arthurian legend melds with far-future tech, and Wizards battle up against war-mech robots. The artwork by Liam Sharp is absolutely astounding, and can easily stand alone as an art book in and of itself, such as in the manner of Dave McKean's early Sandman cover art or Bill Sienkiewicz's work. Very interested to see where this story is leading.
September 14, 2023
I got this book a bday gift from my friends, i must say the artwork alone gets 10/10.
Interesting plot line and makes you giggle between the chapters, the narration is good 👍 the story could have been a little less confusing
Interesting plot line and makes you giggle between the chapters, the narration is good 👍 the story could have been a little less confusing
May 15, 2024
Really difficult to follow and at times feels more like bad prose rather than a comic.
Read
March 27, 2024"My comic would piss people off. It would be a convoluted mess of info dumps, footnotes and sidebars, drawn in random artsy styles, and designed to confuse even the most ardent Morrison fan. I wouldn't know how else to tell it." So says one of the tellers within the tale, not the only time that lampshading StarHenge's issues doesn't wholly serve to excuse them. In the afterword, Liam Sharp - speaking in his own person this time - adds "I am sure it is flawed, and likely uneven", not to mention far too ambitious for a first solo outing. He's not wrong about any of that, and I'd add that while his versatility as an artist is on show here, I could certainly have done with less of the book being in that slightly murky digitally painted style that looks great for 40K illustrations but can feel too static when you try to use it for sequential storytelling. Also, the influences are blatant and not especially novel (it's basically Arthurian Terminator); I'm not convinced that having Merlin go back in time to save magic, while not himself being a magician, is a clever paradox instead of just a confusing contradiction; and there's an audible needle screech when a story intent on returning to the more savage early Matter of Britain as described by Geoffrey of Monmouth, complete with Arthur as bloodthirsty conqueror, nevertheless feels the need to rework his conception to appease modern standards of morality. Despite which list - nearly as long as the one Merlin peruses while in conference with Vortigern - I was really impressed by this, Sharp's boldness and maximalism and unwavering determination to do exactly the project he wants to do, the way he can go full heavy metal (or indeed Heavy Metal) epic yet still find room for heart and laughs without the mix feeling focus-grouped. It's easy to shove three timelines into a story, and insist on great echoes beyond that - but here I felt it. Not to mention how effectively horrible his time-travelling killer robots are on the page, the look drawing at least as much on one of his own past co-creations as Skynet. Having recently read Marvel UK's intermittently brilliant Knights Of Pendragon, featuring some of Sharp's early work, and been frustrated by its inability to settle on a set-up and approach, this is clearly not 'Knights Of Pendragon done right', but it does draw from similar building blocks to make a much more unified and sure of itself series. So far, at least, and I really hope this won't be another Image series that stalls on Volume 1.
January 22, 2023
I quite liked Starhenge, despite the at times grating nature of the writing. Despite the excellence of the artwork, this comic is a bit held back by Sharp's clunky writing and it's overcrammed with too many ideas that could have used some more exposition than we got. The characterization of many of the characters like Wyllt, Daryl, Amber, the Ur-Queen, etc. is also razor-thin and that does not improve across these six issues. A lot of the writing issues made reading this as monthly singles to feel like way more of a slog than it needed to be. And yet, when read all at once, the picture of what Sharp envisioned his story to be actually comes together nicely.
Starhenge is basically a sci-fi, time travel, mythical epic that uses Sharp's ambitious artwork to maximum effect. Ignoring the overuse of colloquialisms in the prose, there is something quite special about the story Sharp puts together across these first six issues. There's a lot of McKean, Bisley and Frazetta influences mixed into Sharp's artwork that only had me eager to keep turning the page.
I imagine a lot of people will probably not enjoy Starhenge because of the clunky writing, but I do think it all comes together quite nicely by the end. I'm actually looking forward to more if Sharp continues this series for another volume.
Starhenge is basically a sci-fi, time travel, mythical epic that uses Sharp's ambitious artwork to maximum effect. Ignoring the overuse of colloquialisms in the prose, there is something quite special about the story Sharp puts together across these first six issues. There's a lot of McKean, Bisley and Frazetta influences mixed into Sharp's artwork that only had me eager to keep turning the page.
I imagine a lot of people will probably not enjoy Starhenge because of the clunky writing, but I do think it all comes together quite nicely by the end. I'm actually looking forward to more if Sharp continues this series for another volume.
May 10, 2023
1.5 stars
DNF. This is so clearly a passion project and full of wild ambition that I kept wanting to change my mind about it, but it’s aggressively bad. Sharp’s narration is a failed imitation of Kieron Gillen’s most madcap writing tics, and that style is incredibly grating when it’s not done really well. The plotting is near incomprehensible as it chaotically jumps between a far future timeline during a cyberpunk war across physical/metaverse/digital realms, an Arthurian era timeline in the old British Isles, and a current day timeline with two teens. The bad writing is made worse by there just being so much of it; in one self-aware bit Sharp literally jokes “Uh-oh! Info dump! I know. Show, don’t tell. But then, I never asked to write this!”
I couldn’t stand to continue attentively reading this after about halfway through, so I skimmed the back half and didn’t see much to change my mind. The art is clearly as much a labor of love as the premise, but it didn’t fare much better for me. Much of it is done in a noisy digital style that reminds me of a DeepDream filter applied to an unremarkable cyberpunk aesthetic mashed up with the iconography of British Isle myth. It reminded me of some of the ICE card art in Netrunner, except Netrunner’s similar art was generally much better and also only expected to evoke a general vibe instead of carrying a narrative.
DNF. This is so clearly a passion project and full of wild ambition that I kept wanting to change my mind about it, but it’s aggressively bad. Sharp’s narration is a failed imitation of Kieron Gillen’s most madcap writing tics, and that style is incredibly grating when it’s not done really well. The plotting is near incomprehensible as it chaotically jumps between a far future timeline during a cyberpunk war across physical/metaverse/digital realms, an Arthurian era timeline in the old British Isles, and a current day timeline with two teens. The bad writing is made worse by there just being so much of it; in one self-aware bit Sharp literally jokes “Uh-oh! Info dump! I know. Show, don’t tell. But then, I never asked to write this!”
I couldn’t stand to continue attentively reading this after about halfway through, so I skimmed the back half and didn’t see much to change my mind. The art is clearly as much a labor of love as the premise, but it didn’t fare much better for me. Much of it is done in a noisy digital style that reminds me of a DeepDream filter applied to an unremarkable cyberpunk aesthetic mashed up with the iconography of British Isle myth. It reminded me of some of the ICE card art in Netrunner, except Netrunner’s similar art was generally much better and also only expected to evoke a general vibe instead of carrying a narrative.
November 16, 2024
I don't have much to write, other than I basically agree with most other 1 or 2-star reviews. When Liam Sharp announced this project, I was like "hell yeah, this sounds so compelling." And visually, it is - it's beautiful, some of the best pages Sharp's many mediums have produced, and I generally love his work.
BUT...
...the words are, to put it succinctly, dissonant.
From the plot, to the huge dumps of text, to the narrative tone and even the lettering, it is very, very hard to read. I realize the tone was a conscious choice, one that Sharp explained in his posts, but I am sad to say, it was a bad choice. When you present a centuries-spanning, time-and-space-crossing saga that blends Arthurian myth with cyberpunk galactic warfare, your narrator cannot be a cheeky teenage girl, or what you imagine she sounds like.
Furthermore, alternating between that and info-dumps from Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Song of Taliesin really, REALLY doesn't help. Not to mention, it is a rather strange wink of the eye to have Merlin inhabit a golem/robot that resembles Death's Head (from Sharp's much older work).
To cut a long story short, this work desperately needed some robust editorial oversight, and sadly it suffers greatly from lack of it - which is a damn shame because, as I said in the beginning, the art is gorgeous.
BUT...
...the words are, to put it succinctly, dissonant.
From the plot, to the huge dumps of text, to the narrative tone and even the lettering, it is very, very hard to read. I realize the tone was a conscious choice, one that Sharp explained in his posts, but I am sad to say, it was a bad choice. When you present a centuries-spanning, time-and-space-crossing saga that blends Arthurian myth with cyberpunk galactic warfare, your narrator cannot be a cheeky teenage girl, or what you imagine she sounds like.
Furthermore, alternating between that and info-dumps from Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Song of Taliesin really, REALLY doesn't help. Not to mention, it is a rather strange wink of the eye to have Merlin inhabit a golem/robot that resembles Death's Head (from Sharp's much older work).
To cut a long story short, this work desperately needed some robust editorial oversight, and sadly it suffers greatly from lack of it - which is a damn shame because, as I said in the beginning, the art is gorgeous.
May 14, 2025
I loved the art. Absolutely hated the writing. Do you love an adult's impression of a teen dumping poorly written, pop-culture infested exposition while the author constantly lampshades the bad writing? Then this is the book for you!
I had no idea who the author was when I picked up the book. As I slogged through it I constantly thought, "You know, I bet this is their first graphic novel. They're understandably lacking confidence in their writing, but they really love it. I'm going to give them some slack!"
Then I found out that the author is a 20+ year comic industry veteran and worked for the biggest names in the game. I was shocked. It smacks of a confidence crisis or arrogant laziness to KNOW that the writing was this bad and explicitly ask the readers to simply ignore it. I can't say which it is, but it needs to be addressed.
To me, the art will never make up for the terrible writing. I wasted my money buying this.
I had no idea who the author was when I picked up the book. As I slogged through it I constantly thought, "You know, I bet this is their first graphic novel. They're understandably lacking confidence in their writing, but they really love it. I'm going to give them some slack!"
Then I found out that the author is a 20+ year comic industry veteran and worked for the biggest names in the game. I was shocked. It smacks of a confidence crisis or arrogant laziness to KNOW that the writing was this bad and explicitly ask the readers to simply ignore it. I can't say which it is, but it needs to be addressed.
To me, the art will never make up for the terrible writing. I wasted my money buying this.
March 15, 2025
STARHENGE is one of the most visually stunning, absorbing, and immersive comics I've ever experienced. Liam Sharp proves himself one of the all-time greats of illustrative ambition - mixing styles and mediums to explore and expand the limits of the comic book page. Sadly, the script, though ambitious as well, isn't anywhere near as engaging. I won't come back for a second STARHENGE book, but I am reminded that Sharp, paired with a solid writer, can make anything sing as well as - or better than - anyone working in comics today (or yesterday).
August 5, 2025
A cavalcade of kooky ideas & conflicting artstyles & cosmic craziness that centers around Camelot.
(Camelot...Camelot! It's only a model.)
The story is all over the place with even the main character lampshading how this future tense of cyborgs & killer robots & a queen sending her son back to the past to save the future is hella confusing, but it makes sense in a twisted way. I will say that most of this IS a lot of setup with not a lot of closure, but what with it being book one, can only hope it's gonna get even better.
(Camelot...Camelot! It's only a model.)
The story is all over the place with even the main character lampshading how this future tense of cyborgs & killer robots & a queen sending her son back to the past to save the future is hella confusing, but it makes sense in a twisted way. I will say that most of this IS a lot of setup with not a lot of closure, but what with it being book one, can only hope it's gonna get even better.
September 2, 2024
Liam Sharp is one of my favorite artists of all time, and his art in this volume might be some of his best. It’s evident that he’s still feeling his way out as a writer, though, with the result being a narrative that feels really cumbersome and disjointed at times. Still, a fun read, looking forward to seeing more.
October 20, 2024
Finally a comic where the prose is as important as the art work. Not your classic appalling writing with great art, more of a marriage of the two.
Art work varied in styles and genres, which on its own will lead to multiple revisits to a complex and rewarding retake on the classic Arthurian legend.
Loved it, let’s have some more!!!!
Art work varied in styles and genres, which on its own will lead to multiple revisits to a complex and rewarding retake on the classic Arthurian legend.
Loved it, let’s have some more!!!!
October 14, 2025
Seguramente habrá gente que crea que es una genialidad y gente que no. Yo estoy dentrisimo del segundo grupo. Visualmente impactante pero un ladrillo argumental que no hay dios que siga. Además de que esa mezcla de oscuridad con lenguaje guay y graciosito de la prota no pega ni con cola. Yo me bajo aquí. Es una obra de muy dificil disfrute
April 23, 2024
The only reason it’s 4 stars, is it took far too long to finish. I had to put it down a couple times and restart it. It was pretty confusing!
But that art?? Ohh mama!
Anyway. I’m looking forward to reading it all at once again now that I have a better grasp of what the heck was going on.
But that art?? Ohh mama!
Anyway. I’m looking forward to reading it all at once again now that I have a better grasp of what the heck was going on.
August 27, 2024
A modern retelling of the Arthur myth blending fantasy, science fiction and time travel together.
The art is the main selling point using many styles and inspirations and Liam Sharp does a good job.
An interesting start to this series.
The art is the main selling point using many styles and inspirations and Liam Sharp does a good job.
An interesting start to this series.
Read
July 3, 2023DNF. I can't rate this. I couldn't make it through the second issue. Bounced off it hard, there's too much going on and none of it was compelling me to keep going.
July 6, 2023
Absolutely astounding artwork, a lot of time went into this
book and it's only book one! I have always loved Arthurian
Legends and this one is time travel based awesome.
book and it's only book one! I have always loved Arthurian
Legends and this one is time travel based awesome.
March 19, 2024
The art is gorgeous. The scripting is very bad and does not help guide a reader through the dense structure.
July 26, 2025
Super fun. Feels like a forward to what would be an amazing series. Hope it continues.
August 15, 2023
It’s another amazingly drawn graphic novel that has a convoluted storyline. The main character even tells you so, a couple of times. To be fair, it is part one, but I think by the time I get to two, I’ll have no idea what’s going on.
September 12, 2025
Beautiful detail. I read along with some music from Assassin's Creed so it came across as very cinematic. The author acknowledges the story's complexity, but it's the kind of book you can plunge into regularly, searching for extras. I'll be fascinated to see where this goes.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews