Story: A Jedi spy in the Outer Rim learns that the Separatists are planning a major offensive against the clone facility on Kamino. General Kenobi leads the defense, as the Kaminoans add the elite ARC Troopers to the Republic’s forces. Meanwhile, Master Windu meets with a group of dissident Jedi in an effort to heal the growing schism in the Order, but Asajj Ventress hopes to turn the dissidents completely away from the Republic.
Review: Taken completely on its own merits, this collection of stories set shortly after the Battle of Geonosis is a worthwhile continuation of the Clone Wars. The writing combines solid action on multiple fronts with character moments that probably exceed anything in the prequels thus far. Jedi disagree over the wisdom of serving a Republic that everyone acknowledges is corrupt; Obi-Wan tries to figure out how to reach out to his troubled padawan. Scenes like this definitely fulfill the licensed material’s mandate to flesh out the stories we see on the screen. At the same time, the most interesting element of the prequels for me thus far has been the Sith’s skill at playing one force against another for the Sith’s ultimate benefit, and Ostrander and Allie continue that theme in their stories.
My only complaint about the writing is that many of these stories just feel a little too short. The action sequences we do get are plotted well and handled quite capably by the artists. Duursema especially has long been a favorite of mine, although she seems to struggle a little bit when working on the likenesses of humans who have appeared on screen. Everyone has nice, clear, detailed art with good, easy-to-follow layouts. But given the page count, the action doesn’t get to build quite as much as I might like. Still, it’s a small quibble. As I said, on their own, these are good stories.
The inevitable ‘but’ comes when I think about this book in the context of the Lucas licensing extravaganza. This is labeled Volume 1, but it collects issues 49 and 50 of Dark Horse’s “Star Wars: Republic” series (along with a separate one-shot issue devoted to Mace’s story). That series introduced characters such as Quinlan Vos, the Jedi who first discovers the impending attack on Kamino. Vos has had an extensive arc over the last year or two, losing his memory and edging very close to the dark side. I worry how well new readers will pick up on that backstory, as it’s briefly mentioned here but not in any detail. Also, this volume includes appearances by Asajj Ventress and the Mon Calamari that might be seen to conflict with events in the animated micro-series. There are folks hard at work even as we speak trying to knit all these spinoffs together into a coherent whole, but I think that effort’s doomed to have some fraying at the edges. If you can look past all that, and the better-than-even odds that something in Episode III will contradict the events in these spinoffs, I recommend this book.
Year: 2003
Writers: John Ostrander, Haden Blackman, Scott Allie
Pencillers:Jan Duursema, Stephen Thompson, Tomas Giorello
Inkers:Dan Parson, Ray Kryssing
Colorist/Letterer:Joe Wayne
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Pages: 128