Friday Night Fights: Please, hammer, don't hurt him!

Philosophers and the like have long pondered what is the true measure of a hero.

Moral rectitude? The unshakeable courage of one's convictions? How well one can handle a hammer-wielding goon while wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and some funky tattoos?

Jack Knight, a.k.a. Starman, has got the last one covered (no pun intended):

(from Starman v2 #12, October 1995; by James Robinson, Tony Harris, and Wade Von Grawbadger)
My copy of the Starman: Night and Day trade paperback (which reprints the story the above sequence appeared in) has been lying on my coffee table for a few weeks now, and I've been rereading it in small chunks as I wait for my wife to get ready for work the past few mornings. The experience has made me realize how much I miss the series, which concluded with issue #80 in 2001, and contemplate the sad fact that no superhero title since has followed in its thematic or tonal footsteps -- pushing the boundries of the superhero genre without losing sight of its roots, using continuity to weave a rich tapestry but not to the point of excluding the uninitiated, maintaining a more "adult" sensibility without resorting to the facile shorthand of gratuitous violence or sleazy pandering.

Not that the series was without its faults. James Robinson's writing had the tendency to slip into toxic levels of pretentiousness, some of which could be justified as characterization (Jack Knight being an obsessive retrologist), but mostly felt like self-conscious showboating though saturation reference-dropping. (Editor: Says the man who makes George S. Kaufman and Bachrach and David jokes...) The series also began to lag quite a bit over the last third of the run, burdened by the weight of its accumulated backstory and the sheer number of ongoing plot points even as it slogged through a couple of overlong story arcs. The departure of artist Tony Harris (whose art nouveaux-inspired style was integral to the unique feel of the title) halfway through the series didn't help either.

Still in all, it was nice having a superhero title that:

1. I honestly looked forward to reading every month for reasons other than morbid curiosity.
2. Offered something more than a feeling of nostalgic deja vu or the sensation that my brain cells were being killed en masse.

Leonard Nimoy - If I Had a Hammer (from The Way I Feel, 1968; collected on Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, 1997) - Spock does Seeger.

(He'll have you hearing bells and seeing stars.)