Crystar #11

[suzene.insanejournal.com]

Title: Crystar, Crystal Warrior #11 (Marvel, 1985, 40 pages)
Story/Art: Jo Duffy/Ricardo Villamonte

Yes, I bought this on purpose. You wind up with stuff like this in your longboxes when you go through that phase of buying ANYTHING that has a favorite character in it.

Crystar. Comic-book tie-in to a toyline that never even rated a cartoon. It's 80's sci-sword and sorcery -- two factions vying for control of a planet. Good guys are crystal, bad guys are magma. It lasted for all of eleven issues. The big guest stars for the final issue? Alpha Flight.

Quality, right? But at least it has one of the sillier dimensional-transport scenes I've ever seen in a book.

11 dial-up unfriendly scans and a few panels beneath the cut.



The set-up.



It's always a bit of a jolt to look back on these old books and see just how much expository dialogue there is. Fantasy comics are pretty bad about this in general, and I guess the fact that there couldn't necessarily be a lot of back-and-forth between the writer and artist didn't help the matter. Still, I find myself missing the TL;DR aspects some days when it seems like there's not enough dialogue in your average comic to fill a thimble.


Enter Shaman, Puck, and Northstar, who is having his worst hair day on record. Yes, even worse than the mullet.





It's really not that remarkable, but you don't piss off the team doc.



Taken out by a twig. Tsk.



"Jean-Pierre"? Bad editor, no cookie.



I think this artist must have had a severe allergy to backgrounds.




If your kid is that blase about you accidentally opening up dimension rifts, you may be doing magic wrong.





Northstar is surprisingly happy to see the buff, sparkly man in the chainmail onesie. But the magma-men attack before interesting questions can be asked.





Got over that remarkably quickly.

And there was a team-up and molten butt was kicked and two cursed lovers had a remarkably mild reaction to not being able to touch each other ever again. Seriously...



I fear that you're failing to sell me on the depths of your tragedy.



And they all lived happily ever after or something, albeit with the three Alphans still stranded on Crystillium at the end of it all.

So what weird, crack-tastic stuff do you own just because a favorite character of yours has a guest-shot in it?

Comments

[skitty_kat.insanejournal.com]

What do I own because my favourite character has a guest appearance in? Why, this very issue! I meant to post it at some point but forgot. Ah well.
I love how ridiculously fey Northstar looks throughout. And how much time (particularly later) he spends checking out crystal dude.
It is entertaining/just plain dumb that the cover has Snowbird in Northstar's place...

The idea of some sort of time/space warp in Shaman's pouch is genius though. Shame they didn't have to all squeeze through it to get through though. That'd have been fun and remembering the trouble the artist had with proportions later would have been just fine for him to draw.

Alpha Flight Fought The Jolly Green Giant?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

And CRYSTAR made it to #11?

You learn something new every day...

Re: Alpha Flight Fought The Jolly Green Giant?

[remial.insanejournal.com]

personally I liked Crystar. Maybe it wasn't the best comic ever, but when it was released there weren't a whole lot of fantasy comics that didn't have a huge backlog of issues.

even if it was based off of a short lived toy line.

Re: Alpha Flight Fought The Jolly Green Giant?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

Which was in fact devised in tandem with the comic. This was a case where, rather than licensing an existing toy line, Marvel decided to be proactive. This may have been their first foray into the toy business proper beyond just licensing.

[perletwo.insanejournal.com]

First scan, I know JP is probably hovering there, but it looks for all the world like he's standing on tippy-toe.

I believe I owned X-Men/Micronauts back in the day. Karza/Kitty WTF?

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

And it was drawn, I think, by Guice and Jones, neither of whose work now looks anything like that.

And there was lots of pink, and yellow, and it was, oh, just fucking terrible.

[raattgift.insanejournal.com]

Argh, I don't want to look at that scan again because of the wtfery of how his chest is drawn.

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

Wow only 11 issues ? The was a big Nighcrawler issues as well if mem. serves...

[menagerie.insanejournal.com]

I think the oddest thing I own that a favorite character guest starred in isn't nearly as cracktacular. An old Marvel UK series called Gun Runner, like much of the Marvel UK stuff, had Ghost Rider in an issue or two.

I always liked the green crystal dude with the eyepatch and crossbow. I mean, lack of depth perception aside here...

[gwalla.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

I see Northstar has been taking lessons from Hal Jordan...

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Tight outfit? Check.
Head injury? Check.
Great ass? Check.

[suzene.insanejournal.com]

No kidding on the head injury - concussions seemed to be the favored way of taking out the speedster way back when.

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Well, not much else would slow them down.

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Dude, Northstar's body language throughout this thing is hillarious. H elooks so very fey. XD

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

I don't care what you say! They were pretty! You've no idea how many characters I created from this notion.