Howdy folks today we’re looking at Stellar #4 from Image Comics and 2018 the space war to end all space wars ends here sort of Stellar’s quite a clever book four issues in and I have no idea where the story’s heading every successive issue features a time jump filling out long decades in the life of a long-lived woman Stellar didn’t ask for powers or for her home to be destroyed by total war we never even learn her real name we know she’s eternally young and seemingly invincible if not quite omnipotent last issue’s alternate universe turns out to have been a different kind of twist than perhaps expected we join Stellar on this new world after many years have passed a world unaffected by the wars that destroyed the first universe not just an alternate world but a fully parallel world where things turned out much better Stellar here seems surplus to requirements the person she could have been is still alive in a farm outside of town with a family there was never a war to destroy the life she could have had at least until the unexpected and inevitable occurs someone follows from the old universe and as it turns out Zenith doesn’t really care about restarting the old war at least he says he doesn’t he just wants a piece of Stellar and anyone else who happens to be in the way of special note this issue is the backmatter a conversation between Joe Keatinge and Bret Blevins on the subject of art Blevins lists his influences a strong list towards gestures towards the unerring classicism that undergrids his work folks like Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth and Maxwell Parrish perhaps not the coolest names to drop today but de rigeur for anyone growing up in the later 20th century when theirs was the gold standard for fantasy illustration Blevins first drawings were copies of Frank Frazetta and Jeffrey Jones a path more or less followed by an entire generation of artists who came into comics in the wake of Barry Windsor-Smith in this context it’s possible to place Blevins in the direct lineage of folks like Wrightson and Kaluta illustrators first who made that kind of virtuosity make sense on the comics page