STARMAN OMNIBUS: VOLUME 2 PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Ronald Wimberly,James Robinson | 416 pages | 11 Sep 2012 | DC Comics | 9781401221959 | English | New York, NY, United States Starman: The Cosmic Omnibus Vol. 1 : James A. Robinson, : : Blackwell's The issues, , include my first issues of Starman. A mediocre Times Past issue tells of Ted's first encounter with The Mist - unnecessary details that didn't illuminate Nash's vengeance on the supporting players in this one-off enough to merit telling. I liked the arc a lot more this time - when I first read it, I almost dropped the series. The ending, that their selfless offer would let them go free, seemed too predictable. I've seen Oh God, You Devil! A Christmas issue, solid, and a Mikaal Times Past, again solid, follow. I enjoy them now - but to a newbie reader who'd just discovered the series a few issues before these, I remember thinking the book was all over the place and only grudgingly decided to give it a sixth issue to impress me. I tried to give a new series six issues to lay its groundwork. The final chapter included here is the one that hooked me: Jake Benetti returns from jail, tries to figure out where he fits into modern Opal City, figures he doesn't, decides to heist a bank to get thrown back in jail, and winds up helping Jack defeat the Royal Flush Gang. Good times, fun, terrific character in Jake. Oct 18, Mario Mikon rated it it was amazing. Here we have great developments to the blue guy story Also, I think this is the start of the REAL magic of the Starman run: how come James Robinson transformed old and lame characters into awesome characters? Take Wesley Dodds, the old Sandman, story arc. An old guy now, but his thought process is shown here, and his arc striked curiosity inside of me: now I want to know more about the character, and how he was when younger The christimas story was also fantastic and sh Here we have great developments to the blue guy story The christimas story was also fantastic and shows how Jack can be a great superhero. Oct 07, Sean rated it liked it. This book gave me a bunch of mixed feelings. There is a lot to like here but I also disliked a large chunk of it as well. By far my favorite segment was the team-up between Jack and Wesley Dodds. Seeing this cross generational team-up was extremely fun. James Robinson still gets overly verbose at times and there are far too many one offs in this collection. Tony Harris's art was missing in quite a few issues here but the art was still decent. Overall, this collection was a step back from the pre This book gave me a bunch of mixed feelings. Overall, this collection was a step back from the previous books but still pleasant. I read the comic books Starman season 2 , Annual 1; relevant stories from Showcase '95 12, Showcase '96 This great book continues to be, well, great! Includes a great tie-in with the now aged 'Sandman', Wesley Dodds. Nov 16, Matt Smith rated it liked it Shelves: comics , read-in , superheroes , dc , epic-comic-series. This wasn't a come to Jesus moment with Starman so much as it reminded me of the first time I read the first volume of Starman, which was an unmitigated slog. It was long, tedious, and James Robinson's prose was out of control. I must admit that I still find myself drawn to the characters in this book, but it really suffered from lack of Jack. This volume had a lot more of the ensemble thing going on, especially in the back half, which I feel didn't have nearly enough Jack. There was some decent This wasn't a come to Jesus moment with Starman so much as it reminded me of the first time I read the first volume of Starman, which was an unmitigated slog. There was some decent Jack in the first half, but even now upon reflection it feels mired in Robinson's eccentricities. And even though Jack goes on a four issue escapade adventure with the Golden Age Sandman which, my god did that make me want to read the Johns run on JSA , that arc felt more about exploring the nature of Golden Age Sasndman than it did about this really interesting Starman. I get that this all feeds into the larger themes of what Robinson's going for. I get that all of this is encompassing his vision for this series and how it's about the larger universe around this one character. But three issues in this are about The Shade and nothing else. One episode is about Mikaal. One episode is a throwaway Christmas issue, which, god, he just piled on the schmaltz a bit much didn't he? One was an annual that was about two non-Jack Knight Starmen. And it all led this to feel a lot like The one without Jesse Custer that was basically about The Saint of Killers and featured none of the regular issues of Preacher and was all about those ancillary specials that slowed the momentum of Preacher to a dead crawl and we have to get through them because on the other side we're going to get Steve Dillon and Jesse and Tulip and Cassidy back. But until then you're kind of stuck. And there was a LOT of Starman in this volume too. We're talking abut like Over a year's worth of content, and the best I can say is that we had one of those dream sequences where Jack got to hang out with David on a pirate ship. All of this compounded by the fact that this book's art felt super 90s in a way the other didn't. Sure, some of it was, but for the most part it felt very stylized and not quite so aged. But this This made me realize that I am not a huge fan of Tony Harris's art. I liked Ex Machina fine, but there's a way to his drawing that, because he traces it off pictures and photographs he stages, makes it feel stilted and stiff and posed. I love his use of lights and shadows, but overall I just And neither is most of the art in this volume. So it's a slog. Three stars because it didn't put me off reading this series in the slightest. But it DID put me to sleep two hours before my bedtime on multiple nights, took me too long, and made me worried about getting my reading list done by the end of the year. At least The Fifth Season got my brain juice blood going and made me feel accomplished and like I had grown and learned something new at the end of this. This beautiful second of six hardcover volumes of James Robinson's much talked about comic Starman the second volume of that title from the mids collects 17—29 and Annual 1 as well as Showcase '95 12 and Showcase '96 4—5. Once again primarily pencilled by Tony Harris, but with a lot of additional pencillers contributing, the volume certainly delivers fully on the promise of the first one. It opens up with "Incident in an Old Haunt" from Showcase '95 12, a brief the Shade story, which he This beautiful second of six hardcover volumes of James Robinson's much talked about comic Starman the second volume of that title from the mids collects 17—29 and Annual 1 as well as Showcase '95 12 and Showcase '96 4—5. It opens up with "Incident in an Old Haunt" from Showcase '95 12, a brief the Shade story, which helps to further establish the character's role within the series. This is followed by issue 17's "Encounters", the first of a number of single issue stories at the beginning and ending of the volume. This one sets the scene for much that is to come, the least of which not being the Shade and Matt O'Dare's joint venture in search of the villain Merritt. Other single issue stories include "Talking with David, '96" 19 , which is yet another issue devoted to a conversation between Jack and his dead brother; "Legends of the Dead Earth" Annual 1, in which the Shade is telling some stories of different Starmen to a bunch of children in a distant future setting placed between issues 23 and 24 in this volume ; "Christmas Knight" 27 , which is a fine Christmas story; and "The Return of Bobo" 29 , which introduces old-time crook Jake Benetti, just out of prison. Among the single issues are also a number "Tales of Times Past" which are usually interesting reads as they tend to be stories that expand the Starman mythos itself. Fate to counter an evil placed between issues 19 and 20 in this volume. All in all, however, the volume is dominated by two main story-arcs: First, the four-parter "Sands and Stars" 20—23 , in which Jack teams up with his father's old colleague, the Golden Age Sandman, a. Wesley Dodds. The latter is a title I have never got around to reading, and I am consequently unsure of which issues let alone volumes collecting them make up that part of the crossover. Suffice it to say, that while I would not mind reading them, they are certainly not required reading for the arc most likely because of being set in different time periods and if the afterword had not mentioned it, I would be none the wiser; And secondly, the three-parter "Hell and Back" 24—26 , which opens with an epilogue to "Sand and Stars" and then, finally, picks up the plot thread of the Shade and Matt O'Dare, and Merritt and his poster.