“Star Harbor Nights” is a story about super heroes and super villains living in the city of Star Harbor.  The first 5 chapters introduce a large cast of characters, with the main plot starting in the sixth chapter.  A supervillain escapes from confinement, bent on taking over the world.  The style is a bit more breezy and tongue-in-cheek than your average comic book, but it’s fun in its own way.

The biggest problem is the cast, which is very large and somewhat confusing.  Everyone seems to know everyone, or be related to them, or be ex-lovers.  A lot of people appear in one of the first few chapters only to disappear for the next 10 or 15 chapters.  I found I had to go back to previous chapters to refresh my memory when some characters were mentioned.  So far only a few characters seem to have distinct personalities, which may also be contributing to the problem.  There are a lot of angry, adrenaline junkies, which is interesting as most of the characters that continue to appear are female. 

Another problem was that the first few chapters had a lot of description or talking, and not much actual action.  There were a lot of references to things that had happened in the past, previous adventures, people not yet introduced, and politics between groups of superheroes.  As the chapters are fairly long, this meant a lot of reading before things seemed to gel into a plot and get going.

The action started in chapter 5 as Minerva, one of the Wisdom Sisters, went out on night patrol, but the story really got started in chapter 6 with the release of the supervillain.  The supervillain, of course, wants to take over the world.  By chapter 12, things are still a bit confusing as the villain seems to want to get back at several people before getting on with the Master Plan, and other people want the villain’s help with their own plans.  Even the villain is having problems taking the plot seriously.

The dialog veers all over the place, between goofy and pretentious.  There are even “interruptions” from characters addressing the reader directly.  It’s all a bit over the top but fun if you’re in the right mood for it.  There are currently 54 chapters and I’m finding I can only read a few at a time, but I am enjoying it.  If you like to see comic book characters turned slightly sideways you might enjoy this.

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