A challenging ending.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Owens
Art: Denys Cowan, Roberto Poggi
Colors: Guru-eFX
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
Having rooted out the rebellion in their ranks, Master Windu and his companions make their final stand against the AD-W4 and his droid army!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I’m craving for more stories to be told during the Clone Wars period and beforehand as there’s a lot of ground to cover, the finale for the Mace Windu series has me hopeful that there’ll be more even though this one largely didn’t succeed. Owens put together a decent enough story but it’s one that’s largely forgettable as you don’t come away really feeling like you know something new or interesting about the characters or the period. This issue has just Cowan and Poggi handling the artwork and everything feels very on point here, especially the montage sequences toward the end that stand out more for me in the details in the backgrounds compared to the simpler things we’ve had for the mission itself.
The finale has two distinct areas to it that combines together what the series has worked with throughout. The first half showcases the final fight against AD-W4 as Windu has set Rissa to go off and help Fisto with what he’s facing while Windu himself goes after AD-W4. Fisto has some decent material here overall as he feels like he’s facing the final fight and greets it properly but it’s so dialogue heavy at first amid the fight itself that it was jarring in presentation. Rissa’s arrival is nicely done and you do get a good sense of both of their personalities in it, which is a bit livelier than what we get from Windu as he faces down AD-W4. It’s not bad per se but it’s standard villain defeat moments where AD-W4 thinks he has the upperhand but is proven wrong before losing his head – which is easy to do since he’s a droid. There’s something to be said for this but we’ve had non-droid characters beheaded as well in the franchise so it’s not restricted to just droids.
The more complicated area is the second half back on Coruscant where Windu files his report with the council and there’s a sense of doing right by Hirrssch with what happened there as forces and support are going to be sent there. The meatier piece is with Prosset brought before them with his hands bound waiting for judgment on his attack on Windu and the Jedi Order itself. Prosset always seems like he wants to go out a martyr here and acts very un-Jedi-like in a lot of ways and some on the Council are only too willing to give him what he wants. But Windu has other plans that leaves you wondering how they’ll be enforced as he basically hopes that Prosset will learn the error of his ways with time in the library. Both men are right in their own way but at the same time both are too small in the grand scheme of things to change what’s going to happen, particularly as neither are really aware of the true threat and are basically squabbling over morality as everything falls around them.
In Summary:
The Mace Windu series gives us a bit of a look at some of the end of Republic era material for the character combined with a little bit of his backstory previously. The final wraps things up about as expected and while there are a couple of nice touches about Windu himself it feels like there wasn’t anything significant enough to really make it fully engaging. I liked it well enough but it felt like it could have been an issue shorter without much difference if it had tightened up the material with the droids and AD-W4. There are a lot of areas to explore here as we saw from the Clone Wars series with a lot of characters, Windu included, but this one just didn’t click strong enough for me. I want more of this character and this period, however.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: December 27th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
