Magical girls stories are my jam. I didn’t have much access to comics that involved girl characters growing up, but around the time I got the middle school, manga started to get super-popular in the United States and I got into Sailor Moon. I’d been slightly exposed to it through the anime, but once I started picking up the comic collections at a bookstore in the mall, I was hooked. I later found myself digging into Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth as well. “Girls having magical powers and beating the crap out of monsters with the help of their friends! Wonderful! Where has this been my whole life?!” So, when I heard through some various Twitter chatters about a comic called Zodiac Starforce being published by Dark Horse and saw a some sample pages, I was intensely curious.
My two digital copies of Zodiac Starforce – the reading bars are wrong, as I have re-read them twice
I’ve never been a fan of buying single issue comics. Part of that was growing up without easy access to a comics shop or store with lots of comics. Part of that was the incessant need of ads to be jammed every 3 pages or so of the story (this has managed to lessen now-a-days). But the more pictures and previews I saw of Zodiac Starforce, with it’s brightly colored imagery and tough-looking ladies, I thought “I need to get ahold of this now, because I don’t know when the trade version will show!” (PS: You can pre-order the trade on Amazon now! 🙂 ) I actually signed up for a ComiXology account finally so that I could get both of the issues at once, as I don’t have a current Local Comic Shop within a good distance and I had been considering using ComiXology.
Right from the start, this comic makes a point of going the untraditional route with it’s first installment by avoiding the “origin story”. Sailor Moon met Luna on the way to school. Sakura opened the book of Clow. Nope, in Zodiac Starforce, time has passed since the girls had fought their first bad guys, and they’re trying to just finish high school. But, we still get a sweet monster fight scene within the first few pages, with our main heroine Emma wondering why it’s showed up.
The second page of Issue one kicks off a sweet monster fight sequence!
While she’s fighting the monster, Emma bumps into Kim, one of her friends/teammates, who is excited at the prospect of getting the team back together to fight bad guys, feelings which Emma doesn’t share. By starting the story after the girls have defeated their main opponent, I got sucked into the mystery of what actually happened to the team in their first adventure and got hooked on discovering if they would join forces again. Later, we’re introduced to the remaining two members of the team, Savanna and Molly, and the girls try to come to an agreement of if they should or shouldn’t join forces again.
Each of the girls comes with her own her strengths and weaknesses that make them unique from each other. Emma is brave and responsible, but also doesn’t want anyone to get hurt (to the point she will hide things from her friends). Kim is eager to help and has a strong sense of justice; Molly is stubborn, tough and loyal, with a low tolerance for nonsense and mean-girls. Savannah is absolutely adorable, with the cutest outfits and just the right about of sass, but also very concerned for the well-being of others. One of my favorite things about the girls is that they have very distinct character designs in body, hair, and faces especially, which is a weakness I’ve found with some magical girl series from Japan – oftentimes the faces are very similar and you rely on the character’s hair to know who they are (especially since most comics in Japan are typically published without coloring).
Seriously, ladies, you shouldn’t be lookin’ at your phones a school. C’mon.
Beyond the storytelling and wonderful characters, the artwork of this comic is phenomenal. There’s a wonderful balance of solid action sequences/monster butt-kickin’ with the average high-school life of dreading upcoming tests, homework and awkward social situations. Plus, there are plenty of great cameos in the first issue of Sailor Moon characters – my favorite is Sailor Pluto hanging out in her secret-identity form at a party. I love that the girls all have a uniform structure that is similiar, but isn’t just a standard outfit with different color tones The coloring is bright, exciting, but also very dark and ominous when the story warrants it. The coloring on transformation sequence panels is especially beautiful, and the fact that the girls’ hair changes color when they’re in their Zodiac forms is an especially nice touch.
Look at all that lovely glowy-ness of Savanna de-transforming. Also: I LOVE HER HAVING A HAT SO MUCH.
Another favorite feature of these two issues is that there’s a “Letters Section” at the end of the comics, with the first issue including an interview with the creators. This reminds me of reading the Golden/Silver age style comics from Marvel (whose book collections usually still include the Letters Page), and the fact that it includes an email address for folks to send in their fanart of Zodiac Starforce is super-fun. Props to my friend D.J. Kirkland for getting a piece into the first issue! You should check him out as well 🙂
The team of Zodiac have packaged together a fascinating, page-turner of a story, great artwork, fabulous coloring and unique character to make for a truly wonderful comics reading experience. The fact that it’s a magical-girl story makes it even better for me, but even if you’re not a fan of such a genre, you’d be missing out by not reading this. Zodiac Starforce is the combined work of writer Kevin Panetta and artist Paulina Ganucheau, with coloring assists by Savanna Ganucheau and a variety solid of cover artists for the main issues and the variant cover issues. Issue 3 comes out in mid-November – but I reaaaaallly wish it was out now!