Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams iI due out 1/7/2020. — **Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams** iI due out 1/7/2020.

By Zack Quaintance — It is one of my deeply-held beliefs that the vast majority of serious music geeks have an origin story with David Bowie. That is, we remember how we first got into Bowie’s music — really got into it, going from casually aware to full-on obsessed, or at least technically appreciative on some meaningful level — and that many of us can trace our subsequent thoughts and interactions with music to that day. I know I certainly can.

My David Bowie origin took place in Austin, Texas, specifically at Waterloo Records, which in my opinion remains that rapidly-changing city’s heart and cultural hub, standing as it does across from the Whole Foods and futuristic condo developments at the intersection of 6th Street and Lamar Boulevard. I was right out of college, writing about music for a daily newspaper in a small city in that dusty state (this was right before the recession and death of that industry). I bought a used CD for $6.99 to listen to on my five-hour drive back from Austin to my then-home. It was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, and my life was changed forever.

This is all an admittedly solipsistic way to transition into my biggest takeaway after reading the new graphic novel, Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams, by writer Steve Horton, artist Mike Allred, and colorist Laura Allred. On a surface level, this book is a graphic sequential Bowie biography that focuses on his rise to iconic fame during the Ziggy Stardust era. It uses as a framing device his final performance as Ziggy Stardust, delving in between into how it came to be, how Bowie came to be, and, perhaps most importantly, the outsized influence of influences.

Indeed, this book overall is largely a story of influences, played out in an open loop between the bands and culture that influence Bowie, and the influence that Bowie paid bands and culture right back. This theme is executed in quick bits about concerts where a young David Bowie sat front row, as well as who attended his own marquee and breakout performances. The idea of influence, however, is not just limited to fun facts about concert attendance. No, it’s actually present in almost every facet of this book, including side figures — like musician Mick Ronson and photographer Mick Rock — who have their own influences on music and culture writ large explored, too.

There are many reasons that the husband-wife art team of Mike and Laura Allred are the perfect fit for this book, with the foundational theme of influence chief among them. The Allreds’ pop art stylings are a perfect aesthetic choice. Like our story, their artwork has been viscerally made rich by cultural influences, imbuing them with the fluid versatility needed to pass through musical eras. This story renders everything from Elvis playing Madison Square Garden later in his career to the glam-androgeny with which Bowie became so closely associated.

Through it all, Allred is clearly enjoying the hell out of the opportunity to draw these things. Allred seems to particularly relish the many opportunities here to homage iconic Bowie album art, doing so in ways that capture the familiar visuals while intermingling what’s happening with Bowie’s life in the real world, thereby creating visuals that feel wholly new and novel from well-tread art. Page layout is also a tool that is used well here. Real world segments — things like band quibbles over money, troubles raising Bowie’s son, etc. — are generally constrained by traditional panel boundaries. Ethereal persona renderings, meanwhile, are given the freedom to take whatever form the material calls for.

The end effect of this layout dichotomy is twofold. We as an audience are given clarity, able to quickly ascertain what’s happening in real life and what’s a product of the creative process playing out in Bowie’s head or with his collaborators. This is a staggering accomplishment, and yet Allred’s vast talent makes it feel easy as one reads, almost seamless. And I’m not even going to try to articulate what Allred does here with the blending (and eventual unblending) of the David and Ziggy personas, other than simply noting this is a definite highlight of the book, one that is best observed first hand.

The writing and script is strong, too. This sort of dense biopic-esque story requires massive feats of script organization to cram an entire life into a narrative that feels coherent. The pacing must be deliberate and the events guided by meaningful, unifying themes. That’s all in here. The script expertly uses Bowie lyrics here and there, and I found myself unable to read it in silence, keeping my Spotify humming with whatever era of Bowie was taking place on the page.

As I mentioned above, this is a story that focuses on the height of Bowie’s fame, back when he first became a global sensation. There are some typical rock story tropes — discord among musicians, a rough plane ride, family issues — but they are all culled from the artist’s real life. Bowie’s latter years are captured by a closing montage, essentially, which for those of us familiar with his life and career effectively evokes much emotion and meaning. Given that my own favorite Bowie album these days is the Brian Eno collaboration, Low, I was a bit disappointed that we couldn’t continue onward. Although, logistically I get it. I’m just being selfish here, which is easy. This book is just such an immersive read. It’s hard to step back out of it and into the real world when done. I’m sure I’m not the only one whose eyebrow raised during Mike Allred’s afterward when he notes that the final montage imagery may be a jumping off point for possible sequels. I’m certainly game for that.

There’s just so much love for Bowie in this book, which makes sense. At the end, Mike Allred also notes that his first gift for Laura was a copy of Hunky Dory, and that they have a granddaughter named Bowie. Drawing Bowie stories is not without precedent for him, either, given that his Red Rocket 7 work was a repurposing of a rejected Ziggy Stardust comic pitch. Anyway, as a Bowie superfan myself, I am without question buying this book. I’m going to entrench a hardcover copy on my coffee table, where my guests can page through it for years to come, marveling at the Bowie material as well as the wider pop culture renderings, the pages and pages of people like Elton John, or the founding of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or a hilarious Bowie interaction at a hotel with Monty Python in full Holy Grail garb.

This book captures Bowie’s life, of course, but so too does it capture pop culture history over the course of heavily-influential decades. We all have our own Bowie origin stories, and now we have a literal companion to page through for all times.

Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams
Script: Steve Horton & Michael Allred
Artwork: Michael Allred
Colors: Laura Allred
Editing: Mark Irwin
Color Assists: Han Allred
Foreword By: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Insight Comics
Release Date: January 7, 2020

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.