Savage Strength of Star Storm #2: Enter: the Don!

This series is super weird, and is completely unconventional in every sense of the word. Savage Strength of Star Storm #2 sees our amnesiac hero Grant Garrison duke it out with a zombie hive alongside Angela Razini, the niece of infamous mob boss, Don Razini. It ditches its sci-fi premise and diverges from the story setup in the previous issue. That isn’t a bad thing however, as it establishes the true ton and premise as this series, as well as a promisingly long run.

While the plot is obscenely random, it works for the most part. Grant is a young superhero who finds himself stumbling into weirder and weirder situations, and this issue sets up the premise of his book way better than the last one did. He’s a character who will thrive in stories both big and small, this series reading like a much older comic or a classicist take like Invincible. It isn’t setup for the trade or the omnibus, this issue being written with the monthly reader in mind.

As such, many will say that the writing on this book will feel rushed, any rush the book works for the plot’s pacing here. The story in this book is clear, concise, and character-focused. It utilizes the medium to pace out a lot of information in a short amount of time, and unlike the last issue, the book is completely understandable. Any new information regarding Don and Angela falls into the readers lap as a result of the story’s natural flow, and is entirely digestible. There are quite a few moments that either don’t work, such as the book’s opening exposition dump on page one, or certain bits where the reader just has to fill everything in themselves.

This issue is its own thing, with really fun science fiction antics, new characters, and great moments of characterization. The zombies may come off as a nonsensical development, and they aren’t as they’re all the dead bodies Don has had buried in his backyard but that’s the nature of Grant Garrison’s life. He’s an old school superhero, who faces down villains of the week, meeting new characters and developing relationships with old at a slow pace. There is an overarching story at play here, but it doesn’t really matter to this issue.

The art and character writing goes hand in hand here. The style is still odd when compared to the direct market superhero standards, but there’s a lot of great panelling work and layouts that really help to highlight the character work being done with both Grant and the new characters. Angela Razini, who is Don’s niece, is an exceptionally compelling. Her band are a fun side piece to this story that don’t hold a lot of weight themselves, but are important to developing Angela.