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characters. Warlock, Captain Marvel, and Robin are only three prominent characters who met their ends at Starlin's hands. In the case of Robin, which, judging by the number of votes back then, it seemed everyone wanted to die, it was kind of a bait-and-switch, and the first of many post-Crisis changes DC made that they panicked and tried to undo as soon as they could. This Robin was not Dick Grayson, but Jason Todd, originally conceived by Doug Moench as a near-clone of Dick, who was now far too old to be Batman's bottom any longer. After Frank Miller's masterful YEAR ONE and a passable Mike Barr story that, for obvious marketing reasons, was called YEAR TWO, the character was given to DICK TRACY writer Max Allan Collins, whose run was fairly dull, except in that he made Jason Todd an unlikeable little hubcap-stealing turd who threw suspects off roofs, changing the character from merely forgettable to actively obnoxious. Soon after it was given to Starlin, and soon after that the mysteriously-named "Death in the Family" storyline began, in which DC made a great deal of money from a 900-number vote scheme on what was already, in case you hadn't noticed, a foregone conclusion. Millions of thumbs, in any event, turned earthward, and Starlin had the Joker beat on the brat with a baseball bat. Well, a lead pipe, but the result was largely the same. I stopped buying superhero comics for a very long time after this, so I suppose I should thank Starlin for saving me money.

With all the money-squirting death at DC, one would assume the smell of universes putrefying would be enough to bring Starlin circling overhead. And what do you know, there he is, helming a comic called DEATH OF THE NEW GODS. So much for playing against type. And Starlin always had a predilection for killing the cosmic guys.

The story? Well, take a list of every New God and then start crossing each out. That's pretty much all the plot Starlin has going on here, and nothing you wouldn't be able to find out on Wikipedia after he's done, if you need to keep up. He'll be ripping out the hearts of each one of Jack Kirby's creations till there ain't no more, the end. Said hearts, incidentally, are just one of Starlin's amazing anatomical mistakes throughout, judging by the bloody holes left in the chests of each of his victims, which aren't even a third of the size of a fist.

That's only one problem with the appalling art. Despite having a smooth inker that does as much as he can to keep the grimacing rictus

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