The sum of his parts.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jody Houser
Art: Luke Ross
Colors: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham
What They Say:
THE FEARSOME SEPARATIST GENERAL STRIKES! In his hunt to kill Jedi, GRIEVOUS stumbles across a power greater than he imagined. What secrets will the killer cyborg find inside a lost Jedi temple? Can Grievous strike a blow against the very FORCE itself?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Age of the Republic run closes out with General Grievous and there’s a lot of open space to work with there for Jody Houser. While Grievous has gotten ample time in the Clone Wars series over the years, his film side is minimal with just the third film and some solid sequences showing something unlike other villains, but with complications that made you unsure of him, such as with the cough. Houser is joined by Luke Ross who once again turns in a great looking book and has me looking forward to more from him. I enjoy the way he designs the worlds that we get and how he adapts the characters with nods toward the actors but not a slavish form that ends up with that weird feeling about them. Grievous is a bit easier since it’s not an actor that’s being drawn from but he gives him a lot more intensity here.
Taking place on a world named Ledeve, Grievous is there hunting down a pair of Jedi that came here for reasons he intends to discover. It’s a simple chase at the start that leaves us with two young dead Jedi but it does lead him to a ruin that he begins to investigate. Being a temple from ages ago, it’s in bad repair overall as we see statues of Jedi long lost to history and how Grievous navigates the various traps that exist. It feels a little bit like some of what Padme went through on Geonosis before with the way it plays out but it’s fun to watch since Grievous has a bit more flexibility in movement. But it’s also interesting as it shows some of his sensor abilities and how things can be tricked at times as he reaches the place where he’s unsure of what’s beyond it.
What the place is, however, is one of those “magical” places where things are not what they seem. His stepping through places him into a floating room of stars as a voice basically tears him down and rebuilds him as he was, showing the full creature he was in pursuit of a way to become as powerful as a Jedi himself. It’s a good examination of the character in brief while reinforcing that he is trying to destroy not only something he doesn’t understand but something that cannot be destroyed. The angry pushback he gives fits the character well because he’s only acting out of anger here against something. And he makes it clear that he doesn’t really learn here by the way he overcompensates and razes the place completely, which he believes destroys it but doesn’t really. It’s a simple but solid distillation of the character.
In Summary:
Jody Houser brings the Age of the Republic run to a close and I’m excited to see what’s next in the Age of the Rebellion. This run has been solid overall with interesting smaller one-off stories that help to flesh out a sprawling and massive universe. Grievous isn’t all that memorable of a character to those that only saw the films but he’s one that I’ve enjoyed through the Clone Wars works and liked the expansion that we got. I do wish we had a proper novel/series exploration for him to map out his existence since I think there’s a lot of neat things to do there and what Houser and Ross presented here is a good way at looking at one of his core personality traits.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: March 13th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
