SJ Reviews: The Comics

In my quest to support the delusion that folks care what I think I'm 
continuing my series of quick and dirty reviews of all the 
Spelljammer products. I hope these will be useful to newcomers and 
those without all of the products.

Rating System:
*= Mediocre, poorly written product with little usefulness.
**= A bad product for several reasons with one or two useful aspects.
***= An average product with some good and some bad points.
****= An above average product with few bad points.
*****= An excellent product with few if any bad points. An essential 
SJ product.

I'm doing this slightly differently, since many storylines are 
multiple issue I'm grouping them together into one entry. 
Self-contained issues are rated individually.

The Spelljammer DC Comics:

TSR Worlds Annual #1
by Barbara Kesel, Jim Lowder, Kate Novak-Grubb, & Dan Miskin (c)1990
Rating:**

The Spelljammer comic's introduction tries to 'link' all the TSR/DC 
comics like Spelljammer was supposed to link worlds. With four 
writers, artists, ect the style changed abruptly. Fuzzy on details 
and poor on understanding how Spelljammer worked but a few 
interesting characters and Unipaxala was interesting. Writing was 
sporadic, with the 'Forgotten Realms' chapter perhaps the best. 
Meredith, a space-faring mage of great powers is introduced and shows 
great potential as a character.

'Rogue Ship' Spelljammer #1-4
by Barbara Kesel (c) Spet-Dec 1990
Rating:***

An interesting story that includes more details on Unipaxala and an 
unnamed world with nomadic tribes who follow the goddess 'Mother of 
Songs' and cast priestly magic through songs. A battle with neogi 
ends the story. A decent start to the series that showed how 
unhelpful owning a smalljammer can be. Meredith's untrustworthiness 
is demonstrated and she becomes more mysterious.

'Boroda Cycle' Spelljammer #5-8
by Barbara Kesel (c) Jan-Apr 1991
Rating:**

The jungle planet Boroda might be set anywhere, and has potential, 
but otherwise this cycle has little of real use for Spelljamming GMs 
to cannibalize and the main storyline is simplistic and poorly 
written. In contrast, the secondary plot revolving around Meredith 
and the smalljammer is obtuse and weird.

'The Geas' Spelljammer #9
by Jeff Grub (c) May 1991
Rating:***

This little one shot, 'flashback' story is good, though some of the 
ideas could have been fleshed out more. The writing is good and 'Lady 
Chaos' (a younger Meredith) is a great pirate queen during the Rock 
of Bral's 'pirate base' phase. My only real complaint is that the 
artists made the interior of the ships look like sci-fi vessels 
instead of Spelljammers.

'Exile on Taladas' Spelljammer #10
by Don Kraar (c) June 1991
Rating:***

Nicely down 'flashback' episode much like #9. Introduces two 
groundling realms that spelljam via galleons, Barras and Astrylon. 
Swashbuckling adventure and some useful worlds, plus just a damn 
interesting story with Nimone (another of Meredith's previous names) 
showing her greedy evil side.

'Meredith Cycle' Spelljammer #11-13
by Barbara Kessel, Don Kraar, & Adam Blaustein (c) July-Sept 1991
Rating:*

These three issues are pretty much garbage, though they have an 
appearance by a dwarven citadel, an elven armada, and a man-o-war 
crewed by Pirates of Gith. The plot dealing with Meredith aka Lady 
Chaos aka Nimone is obscure and unconvincing, heck, the plot is so 
bad it is barely worth discussing. Lots of breaks from Spelljammer 
rules and the Elves of the armada in their Napoleonic costumes look 
particularly horrific. Another example of how TSR could have cared 
less what was done with Spelljammer products.

'Nimone' & 'Song of the Einheriar Spelljammer #14-15
by Don Kraar (c) Oct-Nov 1991
Rating:*

The last two issues tell the story of Meredith and her son Bors, but 
the 'no magic' stance of Bors seems very poorly devised and the 
mechanics don't match the rules. Still, both issues offer some 
interesting tidbits like a magic dead sargasso brought about by too 
many ghosts after a great battle. The line ended horribly, it was 
obvious the writers didn't know/care the comic was being canceled. So 
we are left with many unanswered questions, though much of the 
writing was so bad one is tempted not to care.

Static's Spelljammer Bibliography says that #16-18 may exist, does 
anyone own them? If they exist that might clear up the unanswered 
questions.

[Note to Static: Please feel free to post these on BtMs.:)