I wasn't especially thrilled about the Emperor Vulcan miniseries when it was announced.  The "Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire" storyline was overlong at a year, and a further five issues of the Starjammers didn't seem especially appealing.

Still, the book got off to a somewhat promising start.  Writer Christopher Yost touched on the question of what the ordinary Shi'ar in the street thought about their new ruler - a point which the original story had glossed over entirely.  And he brought in a potentially interesting antagonist, in the form of a race of aliens convinced that the Shi'ar were occupying their ancestral religious lands.  Yes, it was an obvious Israel/Palestine metaphor, but there was story potential in it.

And then we come to issue #5.  Oh lord.

I'm honestly at something of a loss here.  I'm not quite sure what Yost was trying to achieve with this story, which amounts to "And then the villains won, the end."  Obviously, in purely mechanical plot terms, the series aims to solidify Vulcan as the Shi'ar ruler and get rid of the civil war that Brubaker set up.  But that's just an exercise in shuffling the pieces for future stories.  Judged as a miniseries in its own right, what was this story about?

I really don't think it works as a character arc for anyone involved.  The Starjammers spend the story planning to achieve good deeds, fail, and end up in chains, through no particular fault of their own.  And that's where their story ends.  Okay, they get to blow up the macguffin, but that's hardly a satisfying resolution.

Vulcan remains a character based on one-dimensional hate, bulldozing his way through the plot without really changing in any way.  Notionally, the idea is that his approach to the invading aliens proves him to be a "worthy" Shi'ar leader, and wins over the dissident army factions, but this seems an incredibly nihilistic message.

Perhaps Yost was trying to say something about the way religious conflicts can drive people to legitimise obscene and insane behaviour.  But if that's the idea, it doesn't come across.  After some initial exposition, the Scy'ar Tal effectively become just another invading alien race.  Their religious motivations, interesting as they are, barely affect the plot.  They might as well have been random invaders.

It's just a bit of a mess, really.  I suspect there was a point in there struggling to get out, but it doesn't come through.

Rating: C

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