Small reveals expand upon the superficial character.
Creative Staff:
Story: Kelly Thompson
Art: Marco Checchetto
Colors: Andres Mossa
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
As the excitement ramps up for this December’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, come back with us to the final moments of The Force Awakens and the destruction of Starkiller Base to learn the fate of Captain Phasma! Captured by the Resistance and thrown into a garbage masher, we follow the chrome-adorned warrior from the site of the First Order’s biggest defeat to the doorstep of this holiday season’s biggest blockbuster!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While a lot of attention in The Force Awakens leadup was on the Captain Phasma character because of the actress behind it as well as the costume design, many were disappointed with the minimal role that it turned out to be – even with a supposed promise of more to come. That puts writer Kelly Thompson in a difficult position with this miniseries as they can’t really reveal too much but have to provide some character material to make it accessible. Thompson does succeed on that here, in a subtle way, but the win for me once again is just having Marco Checchetto on art duties, especially with Andres Mossa doing the color work. This team could do almost every Star Wars book for years and I’d never tire of it as it’s just ideally suited for what we get with this franchise.
Because of the situation that the character is in because of film development, what we’re getting is something that’s intriguing as it takes place in the final minutes before the end of Starkiller base. When we last saw Phasma, she was being tossed into the trash compactor. Here, she’s made her way out and is looking to figure out what’s going on while covering her own tracks as to taking down the shields under duress. It’s an interesting situation because we see that she works the surveillance to ensure that she’s not found out but it also seems to reveal that someone else was doing that as well, a potential traitor, or it’s someone that she’s assigning blame to in order to frame. That other First Order officer becomes the target for her and she’s relentless in her pursuit of him through the complex, leaving us with her chasing him off-world by the end of the book.
A lot of this installment is narration by Phasma and that’s presented in a very crisp and almost clipped nature that replicates how it was done in the film. There’s a no-nonsense approach here but also one that has some decent cunning to it because she’s trying to cover her actions while also coming across as commanding. Seeing the way she essentially stalks through the base and deal with the threats along the way, all while understanding the bigger picture, is pretty engaging. What sells it even more is the artwork. I’ve adored Checchetto’s work on other Star Wars books previously as it really captures that detailed and cinematic look in a big way and his work with Mossa here is just fantastic. Story is critical to make things work but artwork like this just takes it to a whole other level and allows for some leeway, which is necessary since Thompson is having to play it very minimal overall with a character like this.
In Summary:
While they could have done a full on origin story while avoiding doing that in the film, which they may still not do for all I know, this miniseries is looking to give us the story of how Phasma survived the end of The Force Awakens so she can be a part of what’s to come. We don’t get any reveals here of who is under the armor and it’s all reminiscent of those days oh so long ago when all we had was an action figure of Boba Fett and nothing more, which lead to that first film appearance and then crazy old Marvel Comics stories that invented the sprawling background. There’s a lot of appeal in that but what Thompson does here, wonderfully brought to life by this art team, is something tighter and simpler but very engaging. I’m definitely interested in seeing where it all goes as it has the potential for some fun twists.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 5th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
