Rising Stars: Born in Fire

Written by J. Michael Straczynksi

Trade paperback $19.95 from Top Cow Productions

Rising Stars is J. Michael Straczynski’s way of reminding us that he’s a writer who became a producer, not the other way around. With his comic series from Top Cow, the creator of Babylon 5 (and one-time Murder, She Wrote scribe) dares to do something new that’s already been done. The trick he chooses to play is to recreate an entire super-hero and super-villain universe out of whole cloth, as Alan Moore in Watchmen and Kurt Busiek in Astro City have already done to fine effect. It doesn’t matter: had he created one superhero he’d have thousands of comparisons, some good and some awful, rather than only two formidable ones.

Rising Stars begins as sort of a flipped Midwich Cuckoos, as a strange and unexplained astrological phenomenon flashes over the town of Pederson, Illinois. None of the citizens are affected except for their most vulnerable-- the unborn children. There are 113 children in utero when the flash happens, and when they are bon, they are different. The classic SF tale (and the three movies spun off from it) had Midwich become the Village of the Damned, requiring a hero to pull off a citywide infanticide to save humanity; Straczynski has something else in mind. With one flash in the sky he creates a comic-book universe.

The first several issues of Born in Fire sweeps us through the heady early days of the Pederson Specials, and here Straczynski is most at home spinning out what amounts to a science fiction thriller with super-heroes. The first thing that happens is (as happens in Midwich,) the children are corralled off from their parents into a communal home and put under the care of one pediatrician and psychiatrist, Doctor Welles. Welles is charged with studying the children, documenting their gradually revealed abilities, and of course, discovering their weaknesses should such information ever prove necessary. Welles walks a fine line as he gets to know the children (we see all of this in flashbacks told by several voices) and finds himself forced to decide who needs defending more-- the children or the world that locked them away.

Some of the children aren’t special at all, or in any way anyone can tell. Like the Inhumans,the blast affected the children unequally, so that some can fly and bust concrete blocks, while some have powers that appear utterly useless at first glance. Straczynski has a way of dropping in references to stories he unfolds at length later; we see one non-powered boy who finally would rather stand in front of a truck than admit he’s “normal,” another boy who cannot be hurt, but ultimately fails in life because he cannot feel.

Straczynski’s trick is to create a plot that allows him to do what he seems to be really interested in, which is to tell a heap of individual little stories without the bother of writing a series for each of them. I've often thought this was what probably makes writing Astro City a joy for Busiek-- the point is not the super-villains each hero chases but the odd voices and details around each; he can leave the conventional heroic plots unresolved as needed. In Rsing Stars, the plot of the whole book is one that affects everybody so that Straczynski can jump from one situation to the next.

The “present” of “Born in Fire is some 25 or so years after the blast, after the Specials have integrated into society. Some have become hat we’d call super-heroes, while some have become villains, but even Straczynski is careful to paint his villains as just the walking (or flying) results of sadness and circumstance. (“I can’t imagine,” says one of the Specials, “how lonely they must feel.”)

Of course, the plot of “Born in Fire” is in fact a lot like Watchmen, as a couple of heroes investigate the mysterious deaths of Specials now that all have grown to be adults. One of the investigators is the Poet, a writer whose ability to channel electrical energy has been greatly underestimated. Slowly he becomes aware that the killing of less powerful specials is increasing the abilities of those left over. Which means one of the 113 must be the culprit.

But Straczynski has different plans than Alan Moore did-- because Straczynski’s story is grounded in a science fiction idea, a sudden corner that changes the world, everything must spill out from that corner. Moore told a story of the DC Universe slightly altered, and what that might be like, and how it might end-- he didn’t concern himself with its beginnings. Straczynski tells a story with a beginning that remains important. When the culprit Specials become aware that some of the more moral heroes are on to their murders, they take the story up a notch by manipulating the federal government into declaring all-out war on the heroes. It’s amazing to watch how this plays out, one character at a time, as characters herd one another into hiding in a sort of super-hero variation on the Kristallnacht. Troops are deployed. Phones are tapped. Families are torn apart. Frank Miller made references to such an event in the past of Dark Knight, here we get to see it unfold.

The impressive thing about Rising Stars, like Astro City, is the details and moments along the way, which become gradually more intense as the pressure of the plot mounts. I love the moments of human weakness and frustration-- what would you do if you had the power to control the body of others but lacked self-control? What if you were basically a god guy but let your buddy hero convince you he needed a bad guy to fight? What if you suddenly became the most beautiful person on the world but couldn’t have the one person you loved?

You read about Rising Stars and feel convinced that these characters have existed for a long time, as if this is a yearly crossover story that winds through a whole company. Except that unlike most such crossovers, there are no other series, and what happens here matters. By the end, Straczynski is headed in a whole new direction with his characters, and because he’s taken his time, he convinces us to care.

<i>Rising Stars: Born in Fire</i>