Review: In the Starlight, vol. 1
originally written for and posted on Comicsnob.com [Dec ’06 – May ’08]
In the Starlight, vol. 1
Published by: Netcomics
Writer & Artist: Kyungok Kang
224 (216) pages.
Original Language: English
Orientation: Left to right
Vintage: 1987. US edition February 2007.
Translation: Jennifer Park
Production: Ecomix Media Company
Cover Design: purj
Editors: Nick Aires & Philip Daay
Publisher’s Rating: for ages 13+
Rating: 3 out of 5
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Premise: High school girl with her head in the stars, figuratively, finds herself with her head in the stars, literally.
Synopsis:
Shinhye Yoo is an ordinary student, maybe a bit more serious than most, maybe just a bit cuter than others, but other than an intense interest in astronomy inherited from her college professor Father, she’s no different than most girls her age.
Donghoon Soo is interested in Shinhye, and asks her out. As he gets to know her better, though, he sees that she and her family are ideal for a program run by his uncle, a bigwig of some sort in the Ministry of Science. (We’ll set aside for the moment how a high school kid is involved with top secret government programs, let alone held in high enough regard that he has influence over policy. Maybe it’s covered in volume two?)
Donghoon convinces Shinhye to host Sarah, a foreign exchange student. Sarah is a little different though… just how different will become very clear to Shinhye before the end of the volume.
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Review:
Comparisons to To Terra… [previously reviewed] are going to be inevitable, so let me clear that smoke out of the room first. First, the other is manga while In the Starlight is manhwa, and To Terra pre-dates Starlight by a decade. Takemiya’s work is a space opera set in the distant future, while Kang’s comic is a light drama with hints of romance set in a present day (80s, at the time) Korean high school (at least for now).
What the two share is a stylistic sensibility (both have been influenced by the same predecessors, I think) and a general sci-fi overlay on what are essentially human dramas. That and a little ESP. The comparisons are inevitable because the two properties were each pulled from a little deeper in the past archives (20-30 years back) and came out in US editions within a month or so of each other.
I’m not going to say one is better than the other. [*sigh*] Though I suppose I have, since we do rank these on a 5 point scale — but the good points of one should not be immediately taken as faults of the other. So there.
Enough with Terra and the distant future. What do we have here?
“In the Starlight” is a intriguing title, obviously an earlier work but from an artist that shows great potential. (I’m not familiar with Kang’s later work but I invite anyone who is to let us know in the comments.) In fact, in some cases the retro, “cuter”, unpolished style allows the book get away with story points that might otherwise be cringe-worthy: Flying saucer? Well OK, yeah, that fits.
It’s easy to get caught up in the style and story of writer/artist Kang’s book. The characters are all likeable and engaging (even the “villain” in his own bishounen way) and it seems like everyone but Shinhye has some secret hidden in their backstory that portends even more drama for future volumes.
This is a vision of the sci-fi future that was set up by Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., a more innocent view untainted by the X-Files, Aliens, and other 90s pop-culture. Volume one serves merely as a introduction and launching point; later volumes will no doubt take us deeper into the romantic future-that-was.
