More secrets revealed!
Creative Staff:
Story: Kevin Panetta
Art: Paulina Ganucheau
What They Say:
Winter break isn’t so relaxing for the team! A creature from the dark dimension Nephos has been summoned to their town by unknown enemies. The girls also discover they aren’t the only Zodiac Starforce team–are they friend . . . or foe?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With just under three months between issues, the second Zodiac Starforce miniseries isn’t exactly off with a bang as I had thought I had missed a few issues when this one arrived in my lap. Suffice to say it took a bit to reconnect with what it was doing before but it moves forward well enough. Kevin Panetta continues to have a lot of fun with this cast of characters (though if the delays continue I wish he’d have them use their names a bit more) while Paulina Ganucheau once again puts in a great looking issue with a lot of fun. This one adds a few new things to it, notably a lot more of our titular villain for the series, and the end result is a book that’s just alive in terms of color and design.
A decent chunk is given over to Alice and her crew as they see the results of their summoning in this handsome man that has now slept nearly a day away. The dynamic between Alice and her underlings is amusing but as the fire prince awakes and reveals his name to be Pavos, we get it made clear that he’s definitely an elite self-centered type that’s used to having all his wishes acceded to. It’s fun to see how he views how Earth is, having not been here for a while, but we also later on (mid-combat) get a look at his past when he tried to win over Cimmeria only to end up in her dungeon and the butt of a cruel joke of hers. He’s still intending to win her over, hence the Zodiac Starforce being a good target to do that with, and the team here gives us a good look at him over the course of the issue so that it feels like we get a good handle on him.
The other half of the book focuses on the girls themselves as they’re dealing with all their personal issues, such as Kim and her wanting to find her own path in life. There’s some good bonding material with her as she gets to stay with Savvi for a bit since they’ve always been close and that leads to Kim revealing what it is that she really wants out of life. The issue also plays well with Lily’s training as she’s getting better at using her abilities but still hasn’t mastered it and isn’t quite sure why she needs to, which is silly from the reader’s point of view of course. But what delivers is just seeing the way everyone comes together and just does things as friends, which of course runs right into Pavos and the others in a park of all places. The fight itself is decent and we get Pavos’ past mixed into it, and a few slights that really upset Alice, but it’s a kind of holding pattern as it can’t do too much here other than potentially take out one of the Starforce. Which means it’s a good time for a whole other Starforce to show up in the nick of time.
In Summary:
Zodiac Starforce is hitting familiar plot points and executing them well because we do like the girls and their stories, though I wish we could have a mini series without any action or danger and just us see their lives for a bit. What we do get here is interesting and I liked seeing the training aspect for Lily along the way. Pavos and what’s going on there gets a lot of time for obvious and expected reasons but it was the material with Alice and her group that made it work for me. Pavos is Pavos and fairly simple in terms of story and arc but I liked seeing how Alice handles things and just the way the girls viewed Pavos, at least until they start to get to know what he’s really like.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 27th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
