A new arc begins.
Creative Staff:
Story: Greg Weisman
Art: Pepe Larraz
Colors: David Curiel
What They Say:
We’ve seen Kanan’s last adventure as a Padawan…now we go back to his first adventure! See Caleb Dume’s first steps in the Clone Wars!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After a standalone tale last time set in the present of Star Wars Rebels, that now serves as the framework within the tale of the past that’s being told of Kanan when he was known as Caleb. While the framing isn’t bad, it’s something that I hope we don’t get regularly as it just feels a little odd in how it’s presented. Still, giving us a deeper origin story for our title character while he’s in the midst of being healed in one of the all too familiar tanks works well enough. We get the nice touch at the beginning with the Rebels crew, now illustrated by regular artist Larraz, and some nice nods towards how the crew feels about his being stabbed in the back. Interestingly though, the tale from the past that gets this arc underway doesn’t pick up from where we left off before but goes to his even younger days, before the Initiate tests.
This gives us a younger Caleb that’s going through the motions and education at the Jedi Temple, receiving instruction from Master Yoda and getting chewed out by the medical droid, which just felt weird. While we saw these kinds of things in the background of the prequels for the most part as a lot of Anakin’s training as skipped at this age, it’s nice to dig into it a bit more and see that there are “normal” kids in a sense here with the competitive nature, not being totally attuned to the Force at this point and just working through growing up in addition to everything else. Caleb’s certainly got a different kind of outgoing personality here as it’s prior to his seeing Order 66 executed before his eyes and the death of his Master, an event which obviously shaped him into a hardened person for many reasons.
And that first meeting is what this arc starts to cover, as we get Master Billaba in recovery in one of the tanks herself, having spent six months in there in a coma-like state after a recent battle caused significant losses. She’s in an interesting place herself and you quickly get the sense that these two characters are going to be the types that need each other in that classic master/student dynamic.Billaba comes across well here with a playful side you don’t see from too many of the stoic Jedi and Caleb has some very welcome serious moments and a blunt approach to figuring out things compared to his fellow initiates. We don’t get a lot of time with the two of them together, but the start of a really good dynamic is already underway here before either of them realized it.
In Summary:
The return of Larraz to the artwork here is definitely welcome as I really like his style and find it works perfectly for this book. I even want to see his take on the Rebels side a bit more now. I was quite surprised to see this book go back as far as it does to tell a new Kanan story as I expected something following-up from where we left him in the past. The result here is good though as it gives us an opportunity to push back deeper into The Clones Wars period and establish new ties and connections for the character, light as they may be. Star Wars is made up of far too many coincidences, but it’s part of the charm of it. Weisman largely nails it here and has me wanting to see more of Billaba and even more of Caleb as an initiate. Combined with Larraz’s solid style, panel layout and presentation of action, it’s a great pairing that’s resulting in some very fun and enjoyable material.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: October 28th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
