Kleist captures not only how Bowie has looked over the years on and off stage, but he also uses his art to convey what’s interesting about Bowie. The craft within the storytelling here is lovely, but where the book really shines is with Kleist’s artwork. This includes his relationship with his troubled brother, the colors that come to define his outfits, and the people Bowie himself held in high regard, specifically Andy Warhol. He brings a sort of veteran confidence to this story.Īnd that seemingly makes it easier for him to find and accentuate the most interesting parts of this story that are specific to Bowie.

Kleist also the cartoonist behind the 2006 book, Cash: I See A Darkness, and the 2017 book, Nick Cave: Mercy On Me. This is not the first time Kleist has used comics to tell the story of a musician, and it shows.

Where this one really shines, though, is with the liberties it takes in drawing connections to how Bowie’s fame and talent and interest in alternate personas all sort of coalesce, giving birth to the legends of Ziggy and Bowie both. That stuff is all fine, and it lends a nice structure to the book’s proceedings. It does some typical things within this, juxtaposing Bowie (or is it Ziggy) and his new lifestyle, with the friends and family he sort of inherently rises away from as he becomes a global star. So in one sense, Bowie’s Stardust Year’s feels at times like a traditional classic rock biopic, the story of a genius catching lightning in the bottle and using it to fuel his rise. There’s a definite arc to this story, starting with a struggling, more human Bowie before he has found the Ziggy Stardust persona within him. In this book, Bowie and Ziggy sort of occupy equal spaces, feeling almost like separate entities, united for the good of them both.

Unauthorized by the Bowie Estate or anyone affiliated with it, this new book is perhaps the most artful approach to chronicling Bowie, going more abstract with the way it tells the story of Bowie and his relationship with his Ziggy Stardust persona. The most recent is Reinhard Kleist’s Starman - Bowie’s Stardust Years, out this month from publisher SelfMadeHero. There was 2020’s Bowie: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams, and there was 2022’s The Man Who Fell to Earth: The Official Movie Adaptation(itself an adaptation of a novel). As such, Bowie has been the subject of many books and graphic novels, several in recent years. A history of colorful outfits, a striking personage, a list of alter-egos, neatly divided eras of his career, an outsized reputation, and the list goes on and on.

I’ve written about this before, but David Bowie has many things in common with a comic book character. Coloring: Thomas Gilke and Reinhard Kleist

Nick cave reinhard kleist