A few weeks ago Kierra (Editor-in-Chief) gave us a fantastically critical review of this debut issue and you can find it right here! Jack definately has contrasting opinions so go read below to find out! FIGHT!!!
Written by: Kevin Panetta
Art by: Paulina Ganucheau & Marguerite Sauvage
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
If I had to describe it to anyone it would be as the love child between the Sailor Moon series and Archie Comics.Zodiac Star Force definitely wears its influences on its sleeves, combining the fun and whimsy of Magical Girl shows like Sailor Moon and CardCaptors with the drama and characterisation of series such as Buffy and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (although that last one may have just been me). The story setup is pretty typical for a magical girl story, evil on the rise, young 13-14 year old girls are the only hope, mysterious magical being bestows powers and so on and so forth… Except the story starts two years after the girls destroyed the great evil, they’re 16 now but haven’t kept in close contact since then and now a girl has mysteriously disappeared, while one of the Star Force recently had a curse put on them when attacked by a monster. This distance between the girls is to the point where they’re almost just acquaintances, acting coldly and sometimes outright hostile towards one another rather than the ‘super best buddies forever’ approach to friendship that most stories of this genre portray. I love this moment in time being chosen as a beginning of the story rather than having a proper origins story. Instead, we are told little snippets of information about the past and by the end of the book we know just a little bit less than we would if the origin story were told from the beginning. With the rolling start, the characters already feel much more fleshed out and in depth than they would if we began with them getting their powers.
The approach to the girl’s existing friendship is the facet of this story that probably intrigues me the most, it looks as though a realistic approach to relationships is going to be taken. There will be struggles in the group and Panetta has already shown, with the current relationship between Molly and Kim, that not everyone always comes out of these problems for the better and won’t necessarily be closer to their friends because of it, that sometimes things just don’t work out. This is a stance that I haven’t seen a magical girl series take before, if I remember right even Madoka Magica has most of the girls still being chummy with each other when they’re not being immediately threatened. The pacing throughout the book is pretty speedy and if you combine that with the book beginning after the girls’ first big adventure it lends to the book the feeling that you’re reading one of the last issues rather than the first and as someone who is pretty tired of slow beginnings, I applaud this. The girls themselves are all pretty unique, in both design and personality and although at face value they are mainly the basic tropes that you’d expect in such a group (e.g. the MC, the sensitive one, the muscle and the dependable one), these actually all belong to who you wouldn’t expect and all have hints, both subtle and obvious, that their personalities are so much more than just that which I am very excited to see play out in future issues.
Near the beginning of the book Emma and Kim fight a monster and the combat is kind of cool although it most certainly is not the focus of the scene, some great exposition dialogue is what’s really the focus here and it, amazingly, doesn’t feel out of place. Pretty much the rest of the book is spent setting up characters, at a house party that’s going on. Here we see other friends, boyfriends, opportunities for the characters to grow that are all brilliantly taken (it is now my goal in life to become a professor of Butt Farts). We are also introduced to Diana and her coven of mean-girl witches, a group of girls who are cartoonishly mean to others and the obvious non-magical(?) villains of the series, expect great evil from them and be prepared to hate them more than you probably should.
The art of the book is phenomenal, Paulina Ganucheau should be proud of her amazing work. All the main characters are immediately memorable because of their stylish designs that compliment their personalities perfectly, Savanna is my favourite design. I think the biggest testament to the skill of creating interesting looking characters that Ganucheau shows here is that I repeatedly wanted to know more about random characters in the background, and I lingered on panels during the party more than I have in any other series to fully appreciate all I was seeing. What really brings the art to life is the brilliant choice of vibrant colours that really makes the scenes pop out at you, there’s only one character that I can think of that wears dark colours, Kim’s friend, Josh, and even then he’s highlighted out using a cool purple graphic on his T-shirt (that I must own now that I’ve seen it) and purple sweat bands.
Zodiac Star Force #1 is the comic of the month in my mind, taking a cool spin on the Magical Girl genre in order to make it more accessible to a western audience in a manner that doesn’t water down any of the concepts that make the genre so fun but rather, enhances them and adds a few more to the mix. It promises to be a fantastic journey for people who love magical girl stories, those who have never read one and even those who don’t necessarily care for them. I wish that the second issue was already out and am dreading the wait for it already.
