Can evil really ever be said to be “defeated”? It’s a bit of a cliché in much of mainstream fiction nowadays; the heroes band together to defeat the dark god that threatens humanity, bringing hope to the hopeless, freeing the innocent populace from the shackles of oppression. But, coming to the pages of Heavy Metal Magazine, writer Steve Orlando (Wonder Woman, Batman) is promising to turn this tired trope on its head in his new strip Starward. Along with artist Ivan Shavrin (Guardians of the Galaxy), Orlando is setting out to tell the story of a band of seven cosmic superheroines who are tasked with bringing humanity back from the brink after millennia of mental slavery to the dark god Kaos in the tradition of Sailor Moon. And, true to the spirit of Heavy Metal, it will not be enough to save the universe. Not bad for Heavy Metal’s first specifically Young Adult-aimed feature.
“We’re not giving you these simple, clean concepts that you might get in big capes comics, but we’re giving you something a little more subversive,” said Orlando. “We’re doing the work that people f***ing deserve."
Starward follows typical twenty-year-old Stephanie Cohen, a pre-med student who works as a lifeguard at her local swimming pool. Upon reaching her twentieth birthday, Stephanie is plunged into a cosmic space adventure as she is synced up with her former incarnation, one of the seven daughters of Atlas known as the Seven Starward Sisters and guardians of the Keystar, reality's weakest point to intrusion. All of existence, it seems, was created as a clockwork prison to keep the realm/chthonic god known as Kaos from seeping into reality and corrupting it. And two thousand years ago, Kaos defeated the Seven Starward Sisters, and broke through the Keystar into reality. In other words, the good guys lost.
Stephanie, the incarnation of Starward Purple, arrives as the youngest of the sisters, and is brought up to speed after acquiring the memories of her former self, a struggle in and of itself. Having been cast out into space and time after their defeat, the sisters reconvene in their new lives to put an end to Kaos’s damaging effect upon existence. Their first task? To find a doorway outside reality in order to enter Kaos’s realm and put an end to his vile machinations. While it would be a nice cut-and-dried story if the moral-ethical balance of the world could be saved, Orlando is quick to point out that this will not be the case:
Stephanie is an idealist who believes in that, but no. The characters that have had a more intense-lived experience are quick to say ‘they’re not fighting to remove Kaos and suddenly fix the world; they’re fighting to give people a fighting chance.’ That might seem sort of morbid, but to me that’s also very real and I’m excited to make that point.
In the world of Starward, much of the normal conventions we have in society that bring such heartache and despair is the result of Kaos’s influence gradually strengthening. Orlando said that his story, particularly his analysis of evil, is a criticism of how our culture has allowed the idea of the easy victory over that which we deem “Evil” (with a capital ‘e’) to erode our sense of realism, particularly when it comes to arch-villains like Superman’s Darkseid who call themselves “gods”.
That must mean defeating them really means something huge and it means something important, but I think we have to do better and push ourselves as creators to make folks think about what it does really mean, and what we’re really saying when we have a situation where like all society’s problems could be solved if you just punch this one thing in the face. That’s a fantasy, and I think that people love fantasy but they deserve a smarter, more thought provoking one, and that’s what we’re trying to give them.
Given the YA angle on this particular story, the usual fare of sex and violence is off the table, but Orlando said the classic “Heavy Metal feel” will still be on the table through the subversion he’s woven into the story. It takes readers on a cosmic adventure alongside sarcastic, vulgar and above-all imperfect heroines, on a quest to rid humanity of a “dark god” figure which, even if successful, will not undo the division and strife it has caused. “The work is still on us,” he said.
Orlando sets up his protagonist Stephanie as a bit of a microcosm of this philosophical argument he’s making. A sarcastic if somewhat wistful young woman, Stephanie is caught between the path her somewhat distant parents have laid out for her as a doctor and her desire to study the humanities like folklore and mythology. Struggling against this projection her parents have laid upon her, she later finds that this is part-and-parcel of Kaos’s effect on her world, creating a rift between families and generations.
Ironically, it will be Stephanie’s ability to embrace old stories and mythologies that allows her to adjust so quickly to her new responsibilities. This task, one which each of the sisters must handle on their own, was of particular interest to Orlando in constructing the world. “What would your perceptions be like?” he asked. “How does someone go through the merging of thinking that they’re twenty and having twenty years' worth of memories merged with two thousand years of memories? It’s not always easy and it would be easier for some people than others."
Ultimately, Orlando said that Starward is a fun piece with cosmic implications that relies on the relationships and characterizations of the Seven Sisters as they find a way to beat back the darkness while coming to terms with themselves. “They’re not always perfect. They’ve got real animosities and they’ve got real opinions and misbehave,” he said.
You’re going to have a good time. You’re going to think about that way viewed these concepts before, and you’re going to laugh as these characters go on this journey. They’re going to feel like people that you would want to hang out with. They’re going to feel like people who would bust your chops and you’re going to bust ‘em right back.
A world of mystery and mythology awaits! Starward by Steve Orlando and Ivan Shavrin begins in Heavy Metal Magazine #304, on sale March 3 from Heavy Metal Publishing.