Steve HortonCritiques

A comic book by someone with an obvious love of drawing David Bowie. Covers the years surrounding Ziggy. I particularly liked how the famous "Not only is this the last show of the tour" mini-speech was broken up over multiple pages, scattered throughout the story. I'd buy a sequel.½

As a Bowie fan and as a fan of graphic novels, this is a wonderful interpretive graphic novel biography of Bowie's life but it's not necessarily traditional nor straightforward. Bowie as a person was a complex enigma, who never let his personal life shine too long in the spotlight. He was also perhaps the quintessential post-modern rock star. I think that this graphic novel does a fine job illustrating how Bowie rose to fame in the 1970s and how he constructed a multitude of personas. And I found it compelling, informative, and fascinating in its own ways.

The art is beautiful, the narrative is a bit more unclear. This is not necessarily a scathing critique, however, as this may be indicative of Mr. Bowie's existence.

It's certainly a beautiful thing to look at. Mr. Allred is to be commended.

Amazing artwork with so much detail (even David Lynch appears at one point!), colour throughout. Forward by Neil Gaiman. Definitely a must have book for any Bowie fan.

This was...not good.

First, because it's a graphic novel, let's talk about the best thing here, and that's the art. Finally, someone's gone and done a graphic novel about a musical artist, and they can actually draw that artist. Not cartoony, not in a "style"...they draw the damn artist. So, kudos to Allred for that.

But...not so fast. Obviously he lightboxed a lot of this stuff, because, having read a lot on Bowie and collecting many books about him, I recognized the original photos behind the art. And it appears that Allred couldn't find many for Bowie's lousy manager Tony De Fries, because there's two pages where he appears at least three times, and it's the same drawing, the same expression, every single time. I mean, sure, you need references, but goddammit, you're an artist, not a tracer...extrapolate a little, willya?

So, major points off for that.

And then...sigh...we come to what may laughingly be called the "story"...which it's not. It's essentially a chronology of events both major and minor, and a detailing of every soon-to-be-famous person either met Bowie or was in the audience for one of his shows.

But what it really is is a dry bullet list of people, places, and events. My god, at some points, there's literally a single panel showing each of the band members, and they're speaking the names of the cities they played.

It's pretty, but at the same time, it's pretty lame.

Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams (2021) by Steve Horton, Michael Allred and Laura Allred.
David Bowie was a cultural icon, eventually touching and influencing not only the people who followed his career, but the foundations of taste and culture around him. From humble beginnings to outer space, his continuous drive to reinvent himself gave us many many of versions of the man. His music has been revered by generations and will continue to do so well into the future. This book is a glorious journey along the arc of his career.
But if you are looking to discover what David Bowie was inside, this book not only misses that mark, it completely ignores it. You do have scenes from a life, but the “life” itself, the meanings and desires of Bowie, go totally unexamined. You do not get a feeling as to the ‘why’ of his actions, only the actions themselves. This is a high grade picture show of his career, but nothing more.
The illustrations are tremendous and the journey is well depicted, but at the end of the day I felt as if I had not gained one ounce of insight into the person Bowie was, but only a glorified showing of the person Bowie wanted others to see.
As you can tell, I do have mixed emotions surrounding this book, but perhaps that is the lesson of Bowie’s life. The viewer must be prepared to not like everything that was done, but admire the courage it took for David Bowie to do them

Anyone whose read any of Allred’s earlier work will be well aware of his almost near obsession with David Bowie, and this visually stunning oversize graphic album is perhaps the culmination of that.

Focused on Bowie’s spectacular rise to fame during the Ziggy Stardust era it illustrates a lot of background and stories I wasn’t aware of while truly projecting Bowie’s style and creativity.

But I will say that while the script is crammed full of facts, dates, and people it offers little insight. What it did do is make me interested in finding a good prose comprehensive biography of Bowie to learn more about this remarkable artist and his cultural impact.

This is beautiful. A must for any Bowie fan!

This is beautiful. A must for any Bowie fan!

Five stars for the fantastic art work and my favourite subject matter - David Bowie - which are sufficient for me to overlook the lacklustre writing, flat dialogue and superficial, trivia-laden storyline.

Despite its shortcomings, this is a book I'll return to for its style, I just wish it had more substance.

Perfect if you want to know every famous person David Bowie ever met and see every outfit he ever wore while touring during the 1970s. Not the right book if you want to know anything about David Bowie as a person. The authors have lots of factoids but almost no insights to offer.

The art is nice and colorful, if a bit stiff from the obvious dependence on photo-referencing.

Pretty good! I love all the aliens! The architecture wasn’t as inspired, but it still looked great. The plot was kinda terrible, but didn’t detract too much from my enjoyment.

Michael Allred and Steve Horton’s Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams brilliantly examines the history of David Bowie’s rise to stardom and the creation of his Ziggy Stardust persona. In his distinctive style, Allred blends realistic drawings of historical people with psychedelic imagery to craft something that looks like David Bowie’s music sounds. Allred and Horton trace the creation of glam rock in a way that will transport those who lived through it back to the heady days of the early 1970s while also informing those who learned about it after the fact. The style of the graphic biography conveys meaning much better than a traditional prose work on the subject could. Laura Allred and Han Allred’s colors add a pop art touch that perfectly complements Mike Allred and Horton’s story and art. Neil Gaiman, a fan of Bowie and a colleague of Mike Allred, introduces the graphic biography and sets the stage for what’s to come, serving as the perfect opening act for Bowie.

A successful assassin is haunted (but not particularly bothered) by the ghosts of all those whom she has killed. She moves between of the Purified and Modified, two factions who share an island and an uneasy peace. OK.