Star Power as a beer.

There’s a brewery restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut where we like to eat and drink when we’re in town for ConnectiCon.  The food is good, but the main attraction is their menu of beers.  Over the years, there have been many fancy and creative brews that have gone through that beer list, and they’ve all been very good.  Recently, they added a beer to their list that isn’t a fancy or creative brew.  It’s called The Export and it’s just a regular beer.  Not only is it the best thing on their beer menu, but it reminds me of Star Power as a webcomic.

I love craft beer.  I was heavily into drinking it (but not to excess) for many years and made it a point to sample as many creative concoctions as I could get my hands on.  Whether they were loaded with hops, brewed with chocolate and peanut butter, aged in barrels meant for liquor, or based on ancient recipes from long lost cultures, I wanted to explore all the possibilities that beer had to offer.  It’s a surprisingly versatile beverage and worth the exploration if you’re feeling adventurous.

But then, after years of experimental recipes and boundary-pushing ideas of what a beer could be, I discovered The Export at City Steam Brewery in Hartford.  It’s not a fancy, experimental brew.  It’s not based on long-lost recipes or trying to redefine what a beer is.  It’s just a very well-made and very tasty beer.  It reminded me that complexity is not cruise-control for creativity or excellence.  A simple concept is not a stupid concept, and if executed with skill even the most basic of recipes can produce a masterpiece.  I loved The Export so much that now, when I drink beer, I’m trying to find other basic beers that capture its level of simple excellence.

I feel like Star Power is in the same vein as The Export.  The concept of Star Power as a story is not complicated, nor is it groundbreaking in its originality.  It’s a pretty basic sci-fi superhero story, and if you’re looking for a comic that’s redefining genres or pushing the boundaries of what comics as a medium can accomplish, you’re not going to find those things here.  In our own way, Garth and I set out to make our own Export: the recipe is not complex or new, but we’re using the best ingredients at our disposal to produce (what we hope is) simple excellence.

Star Power is our love letter to the comics we grew up with, both in subject and in tone.  Like what The Export achieves as a beer, we wanted to make something that nails the simple recipe so perfectly that it becomes special.  We try to achieve that with every new page and every new story.