By Lamar Waldron & Rod Whigham with Susan Barrows (Dover Comics & Graphic novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80841-3
During the 1980s a burgeoning science fiction and fantasy book market, bolstered by cinematic and television blockbusters, fed into the new creative boom in the comicbook market, giving “graphic novels†their first tentative push into the real, bigger world outside established fandom as part of a greater zeitgeist.
There was also a very real entrepreneurial creative buzz which led to many European and Japanese works finally breaking into the US market, and most importantly, a lot of attention was actually paid to new, home-grown material…
Among the important early players was The Donning Company Publishers; a Virginia-based outfit established in the 1970s who briefly blazed a pioneering trail with their Starblaze Graphics imprint.
Presumably inspired by the innovative breakthrough work of Byron Preiss (Starfawn, Empire, The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell) Donning invested in lavish, visually impressive volumes targeting a broad crossover market. They began with a volume collecting the first chapters of Wendy & Richard Pini’s independent comics sensation Elfquest, and went on to produced strip adaptations of popular prose properties such as Robert Asprin’s MythAdventures and the co-operative shared-universe fantasy series Thieves’ World.
Along the way they also brought Colleen Doran’s first iteration of A Distant Soil and Phil Foglio’s Buck Godot to a relatively small but crucially mainstream public.
The company’s output was small but highly effective and although the venture ended badly – in court, as many creators sued to regain control of their works – those beautiful, high-quality works proved that bold, (relatively) expensive, high-quality material was the future for an industry and art form that had always cut every corner, paid poorly and worked on miniscule margins…
Lightrunner was very much a product of its time, a riotous intergalactic rollercoaster rocket-ride which began life as a serial in the semi-pro fanzine Visions, and still packs a punch for any fan of brash, flashy space opera.
Now, thanks to the sagacious perspicacity of Dover Books and their continued unearthing of lost graphic gems there’s a fresh edition of a compelling modern classic of the Good Old Bad Old Days to enjoy.
Re-presented in an excitingly oversized (278 x 210 mm) full-colour softcover edition – complete with Chris Claremont’s original effusive Introduction – here is a fabulous futuristic adventure to astound and enthral all lovers of epic bravado and boisterous star-faring fun…
In our far-distant tomorrows, capitalism runs the universe in the form of planetary Corprostates held together by a web of trade undertaken by tachyon-driven solar sailing ships plying the perilous routes of the “Star Streamâ€.
In that tempestuous time and economic climate the Empyrean Alliance is a tenuous association of Free States; restive, politically insecure and greatly dependent on the trustworthy valour of the apolitical Empyrforce: a US Navy-style peacekeeping force and police militia.
Our tale begins with young Burne Garrett, son of a legendary Empyrforce hero, who failed to make the grade and scrubbed out of his military training. Garrett is a pathetic disappointment to himself and everybody else. Now a lowly PR hack, he is filming the initial tests of a radical new type of faster-than-light starship – The Stream Breaker…
When the new super-vessel suddenly comes to eerie life and takes off with him aboard – subsequently vanishing into the unknown – the unwitting fool is suddenly Public Enemy #1…
Framed, lost and desperate, Garrett is soon plunged deep into the seedy underbelly of civilisation; becoming a pawn of pirates and raiders until he is adopted by spoiled, rich wild-child Lanie of Abul Sara (think Paris Hilton in lace-up high heel thigh-boots and a ray-gun… and now stop thinking of that because that’s not how she looks, but what she’s like…).
The fugitive Garrett reluctantly joins the tense and turbulent crew of her beloved star-craft “Lightrunnerâ€â€¦ and somewhere along the way he also picks up a pet monkey that might be the mightiest telepath in the galaxy…
Garrett seeks to clear his name, even while simultaneously being hunted by his own deeply disillusioned galactic-hero father and the true culprits of all his woes, who still want the Stream Breaker prototype he has so providentially hidden. Before long, the lad uncovers a clandestine plot of cosmic proportions that might just mean the end of the entire Alliance…
Although the plot and set-up is no longer new or fresh – especially in films and recent shows or in the burgeoning TV SF market – this brash, breezy, spectacle-packed romp still reads incredibly well and looks great.
Fans of this particular form of chase-based science fic-Action will be well rewarded for taking a trip with Garrett & Co courtesy of the fabulous Lightrunner…
© 1983 Lamar Waldron and Rod Whigham. All Rights Reserved. This edition © 2017.
Lightrunner is scheduled for a February November 24th 2017 release and is available for pre-order now. Check out Dover Publications, your internet retailer or local comics-store or bookshop.