Preview: Reinhard Kleist Exploration Of An Icon In ‘Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years’

by Richard Bruton

Back to the time when Ziggy played guitar in Reinhard Kleist’s dazzling look at David Bowie’s Stardust Years.

In 1972 David Bowie unleashed his rock’n’roll messiah Ziggy Stardust on the world, a provocative play on sexual identity and gender roles that catapulted Bowie to fame, with the world fully recognising the talent of this one0of-a-kind musician.

Graphic novelist Reinhard Kleist tells the tale of Ziggy Stardust in his new book from publisher SelfMadeHero, Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years – and from the preview pages below and the art you can see here, you can surely see that this is a major work, along the lines of Kleist’s previous musical biographies, Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness and Nick Cave: Mercy On Me – beautifully vivid and stylish, just as any major work on Bowie and Ziggy should be.

Here’s the SelfMadeHero PR…

“Reinhard Kleist’s STARMAN weaves the gripping tale of this outrageous character’s genesis, rise, and fall, as well as of David Bowie’s hapless efforts in the London music scene before Ziggy’s arrival, and of the struggles he experienced with his own creation at the height of his fame.

As Bowie transforms himself, ever more frenetically, into the egocentric rock star he first conceived, the extravagant lifestyle he had only ever imagined threatens to engulf him, and bring everything down before his eyes…”