Next in my list is another one of the Spider-Man minicomics that were slapped on the Peter Pan peanut butter lids but I only own one and the rest I couldn’t find. So let’s go to the next minicomic series on our list and check in with the Starriors.
For those of you late to the party, Starriors was a toyline by Tomy that tried to do the Transformers thing with two factions of robots at war without the actual transforming. On this planet Man was forced to go underground, leaving the post disaster world to two groups of robots. The Protectors were supposed to rebuild while the Destructors were supposed to clean out the potential giant mutations. Slaughter Steelgrave, a name that makes me question what their creators were thinking, decided the Starriors alone should inherit the planet and tricks his fellow Destructors into stopping the Protectors from uncovering proof of Man’s continued existence and waking them up.
This is our third trip to this alternate future, thanks again to the website Virtualnaut scanning all six comics and making it available for everybody. So let’s see what our robot pals are up to this time.
“Think they’ll mistake us for Wheeled Warriors?”
Starriors #3
Marvel Comics/Tomy (1984)
No credits given yet again. You can check out the reviews of issue #1 and issue #2, though it’s not completely necessary.
Our story opens as the giant dinosaur Destructor Deadeye wandered into a big pile of quicksand. I’m going to assume nobody knows how to fix his eyes because the clicky little pterodactyl (the toy’s actual action feature) isn’t making for a good guide for the giant blind destruction machine. This is a break for the Protectors as now they can escape yet another close shave in their search for the battlestation holding the last few members of the human race. Let’s hope it’s a LARGE battlestation and nobody brought relatives.
Not that the Protectors prove too much brighter. Nipper and Tinker find a metal bar that they rip off a machine that starts ticking…because it’s a bomb! A very powerful “doomsday weapon” type bomb it seems, and it’s already at 55 minutes. I hope it’s minutes or this really WILL be a “mini” comic. So Hotshot, the Protectors’ leader, makes a deal with Slaughter, since big booms are a military thing and the Destructors are military. They’ll help pull Deadeye from the bog in exchange for the bomb being deactivated. Because a guy named Slaughter Steelgrave is totally reliable to keep his word, they help Deadeye first. Motormouth accidentally knocks Auntie Tank into another patch of bog but the air in her body (don’t ask me) is keeping her from sinking. Or it could be because she’s really small and not going as fast but what do I know? This gives Cut-Up the idea to put Deadeye on his side so the trapped air in his body will make it easier to pull the hulking brute out. I didn’t do well in science class, so sure why not?
Meanwhile Slaughter, who has warned Hotshot that fellow traitor Gouge will kill any Protector who mentions Man, tries to use the bomb as proof Man is bad and Hotshot shouldn’t awaken them, thus proving this was a comic from the 1980s. Yes, as he tries to disarm the bomb he’s all “Man sucks and you should let him die”, which is way too close to a trope I hate (and can’t seem to find the commentary I could have sworn I wrote about it) but he is also trying to protect (no pun intended since he’s on the other team) his own power base. He tries to convince the Protectors at the bomb that Man will just enslave them once it’s all over, and after a bit of a scare our heroes–and Slaughter–manage to stop the explosive just as the others get Deadeye out of the muck.
And here’s something that surprised me. Gouge is ready to end the truce now and destroy the Protectors, but it’s SLAUGHTER that stops him. Slaughter gave his word and he means to honor it. Even Deadeye says if Gouge goes back on his word then honor means Deadeye would smash Gouge. Rare to see in an 80s kids story villain. Of course, Slaughter knows where they’re going and is prepared to attack them once the truce is officially done, but Hotshot is smart enough to change course as soon as they’re all out of site, which turns out to be the right move because they come across the battlestation, a big snake-like building. Well, Castle Grayskull was shaped like a giant skull to keep out the unwanted so I guess it’s a curious hero design plan. Even GI Joe HQ had a huge gun on the top.
This was actually a good story. The villains actually keep their word as a matter of honor (except for the kill happy lieutenant of course). Slaughter isn’t wrong that Man might “enslave” them, or at least treat them like robotic servants, but Hotshot knows Slaughter is their enemy and in this case it’s the benefit of the doubt versus the devil they know. It should be interesting to come back next time and see what happens at the battlestation.
We may have lost out on a Marvel hero (though Marvel did produce these minicomics and publish an unconnected miniseries for the comic racks, which I’ve reviewed in “Yesterday’s” Comic) but next time the odds are in our favor for a DC hero story. Will it be the Superman Sugar Smacks minicomics or the Super Powers collection adventures of one of the villains? Find out in our next exciting installment.
BW Media Spotlight 