Starslayer

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Starslayer was a comic book series published starting in 1982 by American writer and artist Mike Grell starring the time-displaced Celtic warrior Torin MacQuillon.

Starslayer was originally published by Pacific Comics in February 1982 before moving to First Comics starting with issue #7. Mike Grell stayed involved for the first 2 issues, before allowing others to handle the title. It lasted until #34 in 1985.

The first six issues were intended as a stand alone mini-series. General concept was that Torin was taken from the past by his distant descendant in order to gather a series of artifacts that could be used to rejuvenate the sun by sacrificing several planets for fuel. In the series published by First Comics he was with his descendant and a robot on board the "Jolly Roger", an antique spacecraft. From there they traveled parts of the galaxy and ended up in Cynosure, the nexus of all realities for First Comics and gained a crew of pirates.

At some point Torin traveled back to the solar system with a device that would cause a star to implode into a black hole. He used this weapon on the sun in the course of battle to destroy his enemies and spoke the name of the Celtic goddess of death, Morrigan, effectively sacrificing the star to her, causing her to gain great power millennia after the Celtic gods were forgotten and powerless. She later appeared and proclaimed Torin to be her avatar and bade him to go into the galaxy and kill in her name. Torin rebelled, which was the basis of the remainder of the title's run.

It was generally accepted that both writing and artwork deteriorated rapidly with Mike Grell's absence from the comic.

In 1995, Acclaim Comics's Windjammer line reprinted the original Mike Grell work in an 8-issue mini-series.