Okay, it’s time to wrap this thing up. There’s actually a great deal of Battlestar Galactica in this, and I’m sure we’ll get to that series sooner or later. But for now, the takeaway is this: the Star Slammers want to access the Silvermind, which will link all their minds together and allow them to act as one.
Simonson really gets to cut loose with his Star Slammer designs. I love the chunky aesthetic.
And here’s where we get to the cool visuals. Simonson uses these interlocking panels to intimate when pilots are bridging with each other, to greater or lesser extent. He carries this conceit through the final run of this battle.
Another cool way to show the effects of the battle, Simonson has blank panels to indicate a killed Star Slammer.
Sphere realizes that by trying to reach the Silvermind, the Star Slammers as a whole are distracted and not fighting as well as they should.
Jalaia realizes that what makes the difference is some kind of transcendent experience, so she allows herself to be hit, gambling that riding the line between life and death will coax the Silvermind out.
And then Krellik appears, the guy who got his legs crushed from a flashback earlier in the story. And this shock alone is enough to start the Silvermind up, as displayed by the grid suddenly appearing.
And suddenly the Star Slammers are united and acting as one. To this day, I still get the phrase “We wake up singin’ and cryin’!” stuck in my head.
Now the Star Slammer are like a hive mind, no individual personality at the fore. They sacrifice themselves without consideration, knowing it’s the right move at the right time. They will mourn later.
I like the collective “voice” of the Silvermind.
And there’s a really cool inversion here as Jalaia in the top left panel looks up and Krellik in the bottom right panel looks down.
At the final moment, Krellik escapes in a pod and we get a climactic explosion.
The multiplicity of the Silvermind is show in grid again, but to an infinite degree as corner boxes beget corner boxes until detail is no longer legible.
We get a final speech from Sphere, and…
Lookit how cool everyone is! Ahh, the young me loved this story and couldn’t wait for a series to begin. But that never happened, even though clearly Simonson had laid it all out. Too bad. At least we have this to enjoy.
Thanks for reading, True Believers! Please look foward to the next in the Marvel Graphic Novel series, Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds, by Don McGregor and P. Craig Russell, whose art you’ve already seen in the Elric Graphic Novel!
