Starman – Bowie’s Stardust Years
Cartoonist: Reinhard Kleist
Coloring: Thomas Gilke and Reinhard Kleist
Publisher: SelfMadeHero
Publication Date: May 2023
I’ve written about this earlier than, however David Bowie has many issues in widespread with a standard guide character. A historical past of colourful outfits, a hanging personage, a listing of alter-egos, neatly divided eras of his profession, an outsized status, and the checklist goes on and on. As such, Bowie has been the topic of many books and graphic novels, a number of in recent times. There was 2020’s Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams, and there was 2022’s The Man Who Fell to Earth: The Official Movie Adaptation (itself an adaptation of a novel). The most up-to-date is Reinhard Kleist’s Starman — Bowie’s Stardust Years, out this month from writer SelfMadeHero.
Unauthorized by the Bowie Estate or anybody affiliated with it, this new guide is probably essentially the most clever strategy to chronicling Bowie, going extra summary with the way in which it tells the story of Bowie and his relationship along with his Ziggy Stardust persona. In this guide, Bowie and Ziggy type of occupy equal areas, feeling virtually like separate entities, united for the nice of them each. There’s a particular arc to this story, beginning with a struggling, extra human Bowie earlier than he has discovered the Ziggy Stardust persona inside him.
So in a single sense, Bowie’s Stardust Year’s feels at instances like a conventional traditional rock biopic, the story of a genius catching lightning within the bottle and utilizing it to gas his rise. It does some typical issues inside this, juxtaposing Bowie (or is it Ziggy) and his new life-style, with the family and friends he type of inherently rises away from as he turns into a worldwide star. That stuff is all high quality, and it lends a pleasant construction to the guide’s proceedings.
Where this one actually shines, although, is with the liberties it takes in drawing connections to how Bowie’s fame and expertise and curiosity in alternate personas all type of coalesce, giving beginning to the legends of Ziggy and Bowie each. This is just not the primary time Kleist has used comics to inform the story of a musician, and it reveals. Kleist additionally the cartoonist behind the 2006 guide, Cash: I See A Darkness, and the 2017 guide, Nick Cave: Mercy On Me. He brings a type of veteran confidence to this story.
And that seemingly makes it simpler for him to seek out and intensify essentially the most attention-grabbing elements of this story which are particular to Bowie. This consists of his relationship along with his troubled brother, the colours that come to outline his outfits, and the folks Bowie himself held in excessive regard, particularly Andy Warhol.
The craft inside the storytelling right here is beautiful, however the place the guide actually shines is with Kleist’s paintings. Kleist captures not solely how Bowie has appeared through the years on and off stage, however he additionally makes use of his artwork to convey what’s attention-grabbing about Bowie. He accentuates sure eras with colours, whereas utilizing muted shades to attract again the extra mundane. He makes use of extra kinetic cartooning to seize the facility of stage performances. It’s all very nicely accomplished.
What outcomes is yet one more page-turner guide a few rock legend who’s completely fitted to the medium. I believe the best praise I will pay Bowie’s Stardust Years is to say that I learn it multi functional sitting, after which went proper to my stereo to placed on the Ziggy Stardust album afterward.
Starman – Bowie’s Stardust Years is out now.
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