How many drive-in movie theaters are still around? I can think of one in my local area. When I was growing up there were at least five in business, and that was just in rural Northern Utah. I’m sure they were all over the states in the ’80′s and I bet there were even more before my time.
I’d like to blame the hippies for the drastic decline in drive-ins. I don’t mean real hippies. I’m talking about the new eco-fascist breed of hippies that want us to drive less and recycle more. I’m sure they had some greener justification for targeting drive-ins. The Sierra Club probably skewed some polls and found out that we’re all dumping pollutants into the atmosphere just by sitting in our cars with the engines off. No doubt some baby seals were clubbed at a theatre or two and their pelts sold at the swap-meet the morning after. Bye-bye drive-in, hello coal guzzling mega 3D IMAX theatre.
Good lord, I didn’t mean for that last paragraph to happen, but I think I’ll leave it. At the very least it was entertaining to write. Of course I jest about the whole environmental business. We truly are a nation of waste.
Anyway, back to more important topics like Tales of the Starlight Drive-In.
The issues of Starlight read much like an anthology, but instead of having different stories with a variation on a central theme, all of the stories are in chronological order. Every story could be read as a one-shot, but when read together in a single volume, there is a seamless flow. Each story is drawn by a different artist, but written by a single author, Michael San Giacomo.
The series begins with a young boy named Adam. His family is moving into a new home across the street from The Starlight Drive-In. Adam is adamant about not moving until his father shows him the view from the balcony outside his room. He pops up quite a bit in the series, but this isn’t a tale about Adam. The main character is the drive-in itself. Through the human character’s experiences we watch the drive-in mature, peak and then decline. Every tale shows the popular movies of the specific decade. By the time you get into the ‘70’s, you can tell that the drive-in has already seen its best days. It really is a tragic tale, and it’s one that we’ve all lived through without really noticing.
There is a story for everyone in Tales of the Starlight Drive-In. No matter what genre you are interested in, San Giacomo fit it in. Some stories are quirky, some sad, some are serious. He even threw in the mob. Even though you may be able to categorize some individual stories, Tales of the Starlight Drive-In is genre bending. It is a wonderful tale of classic Americana and something that any fan would enjoy reading. At only $1 an issue online, what do you have to lose?
A little information about Visionary Comics:
Visionary Comics’ is a full service comic production studio and digital publisher. As a studio Visionary provides top quality creative, editorial and production services to publishers, studios and for independent projects. Visionary also co-publishes print projects with a number of publishing partners and is a digital publisher with a line of quality titles with new issues debuting every month on multiple venues.
http://www.visionarycomics.com/index.html
This sounds very interesting!
I hate to sound like a broken record, but I’m excited to read this.