Creative Staff:
Story: Matthew Rosenberg
Art: Paolo Villanelli
Colors: Arif Prianto
Letterer: VC’s Joe Sabino
What They Say:
The battle for Ontotho is heating up, and JEDI PADAWAN CERE JUNDA finds herself right in the middle of it, fighting alongside the FYLAR FREEDOM FIGHTERS. But as Cere moves to help end the local war, she will come face to face with the last person she expects! What secrets lie in the hidden temple of Ontotho? The race is on to find out.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we reach the midway point of this miniseries, Matthew Rosenberg throws a nice curveball into the story that makes you question everything. Which isn’t a bad thing at all because working with a Padawan playing at being a Jedi means you have to deal with certain assumptions. With the book continuing to spend most of its time in Fylari territory, Paolo Villanelli does a really good job of giving it an alien feeling with the ground design and the layouts while Arif Prianto’s color work just makes it really alien feeling with the reds and pinks along the ground. I’m still not sure there’s an actual ground that everyone is on at times because of the look of it like it’s on fire or something.
With Cere having now decided to take more direct action and having aligned herself with the Fylari, the opening deals with her leading an attack on the Daa Corporation guys that have shown up to try and secure the area. This doesn’t go well for them but Cere is smart enough to not let any of them get killed, focusing on taking down droids and securing equipment. Which, of course, has tracking devices on it so that the Daa folks can find out where they’ve set up shop. That leads to things not going well at all for the Fylari we get Cere reacting even worse when you get down to it as she goes to sneak into Dyanto’s place herself for things to help in this fight. She’s making rash and idealistic decisions about how to combat what it is that Dylanto and his company are up to and she just keeps putting herself in worse and worse positions because of it.
What’s revealed here is definitely surprising as Dyanto apparently has had Master Cordova under his care since the attack, but they agreed to keep it a secret in case he was still being targeted and initially they thought Cere was dead. There’s a lot of amusing confusion and seeing her trying to get through to him about what the Daa are up to – only to be talked over – makes for some awkward moments. But he’s playing a bigger game here and worked this path, circuitous as it may be, in order to get the two sides talking with her help while taking advantage of that to find out what’s in the mystery building. That’s also something we see in the “present” day a bit as the book opens with the Inquisitor coming to where it is as they raze the landscape of anything living, teasing us with what they’ll find.
In Summary:
Dark Temple continues to move well and what we get with this installment definitely has that middle of the story feeling where things are changing, action happens, and the twists and turns are more fully put into motion. The general flow of the book is good though at times it feels more verbose than it needs to be, a bit more laden with dialogue than is useful. I like the look of the book a lot with Prianto’s coloring really taking the alien feeling of the world to a whole other level. I’m definitely curious what’s in this temple and hope that there’s something of some actual significance there after all this effort.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 25th, 2019
MSRP: $3.99