"Michael Tierney's Wild Stars is a graphic novel that has been twenty years in the making, drawing upon it's earlier incarnations as first a text novel and then as three separate comic book series. Visually it shows as, rearranged by the author into a more chronological telling than the comics presented, the reader can notice sharply contrasting changes in art style as the various pencillers came on board and the series evolved.
"But what is Wild Stars about, specifically?
"It's a science fiction story involving spaceships and time-travel. It's a historical adventure about ancient Native American tribes. It's a ghost story about a Civil War soldier and his namesake descendant. It's a crime drama revolving around drug runners and the search for Adolf Hitler. It's a mystery surrounding a cosmic case of mistaken identity.
"And it's probably a dozen other things, beside.
"Wild Stars is a story that is very demanding of the reader, filled to bursting with subplots and hidden storylines that aren't always apparent on first blush. This isn't your basic "Introduce the bad guy and his evil plot, here comes the hero to stop him, battle battle battle, victory and the end." You can't casually read through this book; it requires you to think. But for readers making the commitment, the payoff is worth the investment.
"Upon reading the first chapter, the reader will be inclined to ask himself exactly what is happening. Upon reaching the middle of the book, the reader will be no closer to catching up with the plot that he is now certain is a literary runaway freight train with track continually being laid out in front of it as it progresses forward. Not until the climax of the story are the seemingly disparate threads brought together for an elegantly simple ending, leaving the reader feeling much like a stupefied Watson at the end of a Sherlock Holmes adventure. Of course, if you pay attention, there is a sequence near the center of it all that serves to put the reader on the proper trail, as the Artomique soldier, Georgian Raveling, is captured and questioned by a South American drug smuggler--and tells a tale that defies belief:
Georgian: You want to hear a truth that you'll never believe? Fine! We were attached to the Supreme Commander of the Western Crusade.
Mendez: What?
Georgian: Our original goal was to recover a lost nuclear bomb. Instead we discovered a weapon so powerful that it destroyed the world.
Max: The world looks like it's in pretty good shape to me.
Georgian: My reality was destroyed. Our history was different. The United States never existed. Fascism conquered a world where rotor technology was developed instead of propellers. We're chasing a man with a time travel device that he used to change history. That scuba diver might be the destroyer of worlds!
"So climb aboard, keep your eye on the shell games that go on with Carlton MacKanaly and his clone, Carlton MacKanaly (yes, really) as Tierney takes you from the travelling space city of Magoria to the sunken treasures off Bad Juju Reef to the burning marijuana fields outside of Argenta and ultimately to New Atlantis. It's a long ride with a lot of sights to see. Settle in and have your tickets ready, because once it starts there's nowhere to get off until the last page."
R.J. Carter
