“He spoke of lands not far, nor lands they were in his mind”
Creators have given us different takes on King Arthur — some have set the story in a sci-fi setting, some have put it in a modern-day setting, some have done it in the past, but put a different spin on it. 
Liam Sharp, who does everything (including the lettering!) in Starhenge Book One: The Dragon and the Boar (with some “additional art” by Matylda McCormack-Sharp, whom I’m pretty sure is his daughter), decides … to do every take there is? This is a wild, weird comic from Image, which costs $17.99 and comes in at 145 pages.
Sharp gives us a nice, twisty story that begins in the far future, where magic has been snuffed out and machines are in the process of wiping out humanity, which ain’t good. The scheme to save humanity is … to send people back to Arthur’s time to save magic? Somehow? One of the people — Wyllt — is a prince in the future, and when he’s sent back, he becomes Merlin (which is a title). Of course he does! Meanwhile, in our present, there’s a teenager, Amber Weaver (luckily, Sharp does note the meaning of the name), who’s hanging out with Daryl, a top high school football player. Both of them, it turns out, are connected to Merlin and Arthur, because of course they are.
There’s not too much to say about the story more than that — Sharp follows the traditional Arthur narrative mostly, with a few minor variations. Amber, who’s the narrator of the comic, tries to handwave away Uther Pendragon’s rape of Igerna, Gorlois’s wife, but she doesn’t do a very good job of it, and Sharp’s attempt to make the comic more “woke” is a bit annoying — back in the day, men raped women, and Uther is not the hero of the Arthur story and Arthur can’t help that he’s the product of a rape, so why does Sharp (and Amber) feel the need to twist it so it’s not as creepy (and Sharp doesn’t really succeed — it’s still creepy)? 
The future aspect of the book means that there are some changes with the characters, but not too much, as we get Modred fighting Arthur and that seems to lead, millennia later, to the death of magic. But it’s basically what we expect, even though Sharp does have some fun with jumping back and forth in time and the narrative, which makes it seem a bit more complex than it is. Still, it’s a nice way to tell the Arthur story — Sharp doesn’t really try to make it “historical,” even though Amber does talk about when the Arthur story took place and why Arthur would try to take over Rome, but he also recognizes that the ahistoricality of the Arthur story is why it works. It’s a fun story — I don’t know how long Sharp plans to do it for (I know the second arc has or is about to come out), but it seems like there’s a good amount to work with. Sharp also has fun with the way he writes it — it breaks the fourth wall, is a bit aware of itself as a comic, and there’s a lot of info dumping that Sharp, nicely, lampshades. He does a pretty good job having his cake and eating it, too, which is always fun.
Sharp does a lot of what I think of “computer-assisted” art in this book, which I’ve never loved, but Sharp is quite good at it, so I don’t mind it too much. It works really well with the future stuff, where the out-of-control machinery threatens to overwhelm humanity, and it works ok in the past, where we get smeared green nature all over the place. I don’t love the backgrounds in the past, but I get it. 
He goes Full Frazetta on some of the characters in the past, which works well, but as a lot with this kind of art, occasionally people get too blurry because it’s not necessarily just pencil lines, it’s some kind of computer effect. Speaking of effects, the special effects in the book are pretty good, as when the Death Robot From The Future (that’s what it’s called, I promise!) shows up to menace Amber and Daryl, with lightning crackling around it. Sharp still breaks out the oldy-tyme penciling skills every so often, which adds a nice break from the more “futuristic” kind of art. When the Death Robot From The Future shows up, the book becomes as superhero-y as it ever does, so Sharp pencils it with straight pencils, with the flatter colors that we get from old-school comics, and it’s an excellent choice (and it looks great, too). I can’t imagine Sharp, who started in 2000AD but made a name for himself by drawing Death’s Head II for Marvel UK, didn’t have that character (and, of course, the Predator) in his head when he made up the Death Robot From The Future, but it’s still a cool design. When he draws Amber’s childhood, he shifts to a more cartoony style, which works very well, given that it’s a flashback and she’s idealizing her past a little. I also like that Amber and Daryl’s present is gray and dull, but the past is, despite being a bit dark, still brighter than the present. It’s a neat trick.
Starhenge is a cool comic. I’m definitely looking forward to where Sharp goes with it!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
