Writer: Joseph Keatinge
Artist: Bret Blevins
Lettering: Rus Wooton
Cover: Bret Blevins
Publisher: Image Comics/Skybound
Spoilers
I went in to this book really wanting to like it. The cover seemed cool, the color palette appealed to me, and the title called to me with its glittery aura. Yet, I was left slightly disgruntled. I’m not sure if it’s even fair of me to critique it, since I don’t have solid issues to point out; it just felt a little off. I’ll try to be more specific.
What started as a space opera feel ended up being strangely dramatic in a way that didn’t really work with the art. The bounty hunter motif is a little tired, but I still felt fine traipsing through this world with Stellar, and I will say that artistically, the backgrounds are awesome and filled with wonder. It was by no means blowing me away at first, but then I felt like the story was really trying hard, perhaps too hard by the end, and it just fell short. I couldn’t really connect much with what was going on, as the dialogue didn’t seem to always follow a logical sequence, and the characters were not all that interesting. Perhaps the story was just not my cosmic cup of tea, I don’t know.
I also was a little confused by the art, too. Somehow, certain scenes didn’t look quite right. Again, there was this weird sense of something being off, and I just can’t quite put my finger on it. I enjoyed the landscapes immensely, but the closeups on faces threw me. The expressions seemed stiff and not fluid: as if they were dolls and not alive. It almost didn’t seem like the same artist drew both the faces and the backgrounds at times. The planning of panels could have been thought out more, too. While I loved that many of the pages had full backgrounds going behind smaller panels, the arrangements were repeated too often, especially towards the end.
On the whole, Stellar was something of a letdown, but I’m sure there will be a readership out there that appreciates it far more than me.
Overall: 6/10
Tee LaFrance Todd writes, edits, reads, explores, and creates whenever she can find the time. When she’s not engaged in some form of storytelling, you can find Tee traversing the world with her husband and her dog, making things, reading tarot cards, and generally striving to live a life beyond anything she can imagine.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeeLaFranceTodd
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeeLaFranceTodd
