I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, was a late adopter of Twitter and left when it turned fascist, and always declined to adopt Facebook. He was a fairly early adventurer into the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

The Great Comic Read Through

Part Eleven

Dreadstar, Part One
What If #34
4 October 2026

For some reason, I had it in my head to read Dreadstar, but the boxes containing it were on the bottle of the stack, so it took a while to shift them all around. Then I found that the series was spread across two boxes, but ... more of that later.

First, I'm going to dip into 'What If?' which I will continue to do off and on for a while. In the early days of comics, there would be the odd, often in several senses of the word, story where, oh, Batman would become the Joker, or Captain America was Russian, or something like that. Then it would be revealed that it had aaaaallll beeeen a dreeeeeam. (Or a hoax, or an imaginary story.) This became such a trope that some comics would have a banner on the cover saying, 'Not a dream or a hoax or an imaginary story!' to indicated that whatever the unlikely event featured on the cover or in the story was actually canon. In the late 70s, Marvel leaned into the trope with 'What If?', a series where The Watcher would introduce alternate history stories, with the clear understanding that these were not canon in any sense. Each issues had a title starting with 'What If' and then proposing the change. The first was 'What If Spider-Man Had Joined the Fantastic Four?' I have quite a few, but not a complete run, and my first issue is #6. 'What If the Fantastic Four Had Different Super-Powers?' I'm not doing that one in this article, though. Instead, I'm doing #34,from 1982.

What If? #34

One of the stories has entered the personal lexicon of my brother and me. There was a couple page story riffing on the fact that the PBS show 'The Electric Company' had a recurring skit called 'Spidey Super Stories,' which was, as it happens, the first live action Spider-Man. 'The Electric Company' was a product of the Children's Television Workshop, and aimed at tweens - kids who had grown up on Sesame Street and were ready to move on. Morgan Freeman and Rita Morena were in the original cast. We loved it! But I digress.

There was also a comic book version of 'Spidey Super Stories,' which was a gentle, kid-friendly, take on Spider-Man. Running with that idea, 'What if?' postulated tie-ins with other public institutions. Thus, 'Marvel Comics and the National Endowment for the Arts present Spidey Intellectual Stories.' Absolutely hilarious. My brother and I will still occasionally come out with the catch phrase, 'your logic has defeated me Spider-Man!' (Although we are slightly misquoting.)

One of the interesting features in hindsight is that it is a snapshot of what Marvel (and to some extent comics in general) looked like in 1982. Which titles and creators were the ones that were most in the zeitgeist? Frank Miller did a one-page Daredevil gag, just as he was re-inventing Daredevil and setting the tone for a sea-change in the kinds of stories that comics could tell.

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four feature prominently. The Avengers less so. And a variety of relatively minor characters get a gag here or there. 'Dungeons & Dragons' has a full page ad, with mailing addresses in both the US and the UK, which is kind of interesting. I didn't know TSR had a UK corporation.

In any case, 'What if?' #34 is a funny and irreverent, and at times brilliant, one-off entry in the Marvel catalogue. Recommended.

Dreadstar

So, Dreadstar. I don't know what put it in my head, but something did, so eventually I dug them out. The first Dreadstar story ran in Epic Magazine, then there was a one-off, 'The Price,' and then a Marvel Graphic novel, all before it became the first entry in the Epic comics line. I'm pretty sure I had that run of Epic Magazine, and the graphic novel as well. Sometime in the last forty-to-fifty years, they went walkabout. Since they are all oversize, in comic book terms, I suspect they all were in a single box, which was misplaced during one of my moves. Frustrating. I also had a portfolio of Dreadstar prints that I picked up at one of the occasional auctions that Mile High held. That was a very odd size, and I've no idea whatsoever what happened to it. Hope springs eternal the box will show up, but it seems increasingly unlikely.

From a story point of view, it's just as well that the first few issues of the comic spend a reasonable amount of time doing the comic book equivalent of 'previously on Dreadstar ...' The recaps are integrated into the existing story, so it doesn't feel like forced exposition.

The story itself is classic space opera in the Star Wars vein. There's tech, there's magic, there's a plucky crew of misfits taking on the entrenched powers-that-be. In this case, there's a centuries old war between two galactic superpowers. Neither side is the good guys. One side is worse, but it's a lesser of two evils situation. This makes for some interesting moral dilemmas. When one side, the worse one, develops a possibly overwhelming new technology, what does our team do? Let them end the war, which is good, and implement a grand purge of the conquered, which is not good; or try to aid the other side and avoid potential genocide, which is good, at the cost of prolonging the war, which is not good.

One of the subplots revolves around the identity of 'Z' the mysterious advisor to King Gregzor of the Monarchy. At the end of #8, Vanth Dreadstar thinks he knows the answer and sets off for a confrontation. Not quite a cliff-hangar, but definitely heading for some sort of resolution. More about that anon, when I return to the series with issue #9.

Jim Starlin is the creator, writer, and artist, and he's very good. The story is good, the characters are engaging, and the writing is good. The art is excellent. I'm enjoying re-reading the series.

The comic started its run in October of 1982, running bi-monthly. Which means that after six issues, it had been about a year, hence time for an annual! Annual #1 was a straight-up reprinting of a story published by Eclipse in 1981. That was black and white, and for the annual, colour was added. One of the things to note is that this is an example of the creator-owned shift taking place at this time. The first Dreadstar story ran in Epic as noted above. The second storyline, this one, was published by Eclipse Comics. Starlin was free to take the characters and story where he wanted. Then it was back to Marvel for the graphic novel, and Marvel/Epic for the series.

'The Price' is the origin story of Dreadstar's friend and colleague, Syzygy Darklock. While I've been calling it part of the Dreadstar story, Dreadstar isn't in this at all. Properly, this is part two of 'The Metamorphosis Odyssey,' with part one being the Epic magazine run, and part three being the graphic novel.

It's grim. It's setting up the events in the graphic novel and the series, and that setting is pretty harsh. The colourisation is pretty good, although there are places where the text is bit muddy, and I suspect that it was cleaner in the original black and white. The story and art are up to Starlin's usual high standard. The characterisations are well done, but not easy. The story concerns Syzygy Darklock positioning himself in opposition to 'The Church of the Instrumentality,' the greater of the two evils in the long running war, and the price, or 'The Price,' he pays to be able to effectively do that.

I'm quite enjoying Dreadstar this time around, even if I am annoyed that I misplaced the earlier material. It's probably going to be a keeper. There are another 56 issues of Dreadstar coming in the series, so we'll see ...

What If The Fantastic Four had different super-powers?

Just for fun, as a palate cleanser, I went back to 'What If?' after reading some Dreadstar, and #6 showcases the strengths and weaknesses of the series premise. If you are a big fan of the FF, and steeped in their history and so on, then you would probably quite enjoy this issue. It's an alternate history take on characters you like, riffing off the 'real' history of the group. It mixes in some of the classic villains, giving them a bit of a What If? twist as well.

I'm not a big FFF (Fantastic Four Fan), as you might have guessed. This means I find this issue to be kind of meh. This also explains why I don't have all the 'What Ifs' in my run. If I wasn't at least vaguely interested in the characters or the premise, I gave it a miss.

This comic is in terrible shape, too. Apart from the physical wear and tear, someone has taken felt tip markers and 'improved' some of the artwork, both in the story and in some of the ads. This makes me think that it was probably either a garage sale find, or one of my friends' younger siblings passed it on or somesuch. I've got a couple of comics here and there with that kind of damage, and it clearly happened before they came into my hands.

• Comic Read Through Part Ten