Rising Stars: Voices of the Dead / Bright

Rising Stars: Voices of the Dead / Bright (2006) by Fiona Avery, Dan Jurgens, Staz Johnson, Al Rio

This is actually the last published of the Rising Stars comics, but it’s my least favorite, and since there was no need to read the latter comics in order, I read it before Visitations because I don’t really like Voices of the Dead / Bright.

Bright is the story of Matthew Bright and how he became a police officer in New York. As a Special he was forbidden to become a cop in Penderson, so he took an alias and moved to New York to join the force there.

The fact he was discovered and the eventually given a uniform and badge by the NYPD was made clear in the main story, these are just the details of how it happened. They’re fine and pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

The first story, “Voices of the Dead” is Lionel’s story. He can talk to the dead and spends his life haunted by them. (Ha) After becoming an adult, he took work discovering what was behind reports and hauntings, and if possible helping the ghosts to move on. He also searches for answers as to whether there is truly something after death.

The stories are confusing and to me don’t feel like they add anything to Lionel, who is actually quite a complicated character. We discover he had a love who died (of course he did). We see his search for whether an afterlife exists (undetermined). And we see how Paulson’s group abused what they learned from him.

And the ending seems to either miss the point of or completely go against how things ended in the main story.

Essentially, these two books have neither the strength of storytelling or the heart of the main story line. I re-read them mostly to see if I still time had changed how I felt about them.

It hadn’t.

Skip these stories, they don’t add anything to the main tale.
Rating: 4/10

Publisher: Top Cow

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