Jonni Starr
Jonni Starr © Darryl Cunningham (script) & Phil Elliot (art)
| Jonni Starr Darryl Cunningham (script) & Phil Elliot (art) |
| Links: Phil's website Elliot Design |
Regular readers should recognise the names on offer here. Phil Elliott is one of the originators of the British Small Press from back in the early Eighties as covered in my 'Ancient Poets' article way back in Zum! #1. Darryl Cunningham is only slightly less a stalwart; since his late 8Os start, he's appeared in innumerable titles including Inkling, Automatic and Scenes from the inside.
The spacefarin' Jonni Starr started life as a short animation, on a giveaway CD found with MacFormat magazine. What's here, I'm guessing was intended as a single-tier serialisation that's ended up collected into its own comic. As such origins might suggest, this couldn't qualify as either creator's finest moment. (Check out Cunningham and Ganes' Meet John Dark, or any of Elliott's Tales from Gimbley If you're after that.) Yet, Slight as it may be, Its also fun; with Cunningham's scripts poised halfway between satire and pastiche of sci-fi conventions. Starr escapes a killer fall and near drowning only to find himself strung up by scaly monsters. "It's just one thing after another today" he muses.
Elliott's clear-line artwork is always a joy to behold, and here his sense of design and draughtmanship are as strong as ever. What's more, his Starr's chin is the squarest a spaceman has sported since Dan Dare!
Techno-buffs who'd like to see a slice of the animated Jonni Starr can include another £1.20 for a disc. As the host mag's name might suggest, this is mac-format*.
Gavin Burrows
*Quicktime Player is required to play these, so in PC owners with Quicktime installed should also manage to view them. See Phil's website for more info.
| Jonni Starr: 24 A5 pages (landscape), colour printout cover. | Received at ZUM! HQ: no info |
£1.50 (+P+P?) | Phil Elliot, 2 Alexandra St, Maidstone, Kent, ME14 2TD |