The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1959: Aster #1, October 1994

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(I prepared the following posts for a week when I was feeling overwhelmed. Well, here it is. This week we'll be thinking about a Filipino-created character who made it into the American market. There's a nice summary of the series here.)

 I thought that I would find the publishers from whom I only have a few comics and read through what output of theirs I have. For Entity Comics, who I'm more familiar with for Zen, Intergalactic Ninja, I have 4 of the 5 issues of the first series of Aster (Edit: I did find the one I was missing). I did a bit of research, and this character apparently spins out of another series by Entity called Harriers about which I can find little info. Indeed, the information about that and this series are hard to come by. But it was the 90s, and there were a billion comics (I'm exaggerating) that came out in that decade.

What I will first say is that Aster is a gorgeous comic. There's something of George Perez to the Roxas' work. The women in the comic are not top heavy, though they're still quite scantily-clad. That said, it's a very primitive world upon which the story takes place, and with the exception of Aster himself, everyone is scantily-clad. Which works out nicely for the bisexual comic reader ;D.

I am intrigued by the story here - somehow Aster is a ridiculously powerful "celestial knight" who awakens after an exile on an unfamiliar world that has been taken over by an old comrade of his. I think with the context of Harriers, the story might have a little more weight, but there's a handy little exposition at the beginning that gives enough information to enjoy this story without having read the previous one. I had some qualms with this when I was reading London Night's Razor: Torture series, so it's nice to see that some of the publishers in the 90s were thinking about each comic being someone's first.

More to follow.