The tension ramps up as everything becomes more dangerous.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ethan Sacks
Art: Luke Ross
Colors: Lee Roughridge
Letterer: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
BEFORE THE EXCITING EVENTS OF STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER! Decades after the Imperial occupation enslaved their planet, there are those willing to stop at nothing to prevent another war from bloodying the waters of Mon Cala.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the first half of this miniseries behind us I do admit that I’m already finding it kind of stalling out some and not quite as strong in direction as I had hoped for. Ethan Sacks provided for some interesting locales to work with and I liked tying things back to Mon Cala and paying respect to Ackbar, which in turn takes us to a couple of different stories from the past year or two in the comics. And I continue to like Luke Ross’ artwork as he’s got a firm hand on most of the elements of it and gives it a distinctive enough feel beyond that, but there are times where Rose just feels not quite as accurate as she should be, though she’s far close than Leia who looks to be more from the post-ROTJ era than in the Resistance era.
The time on Mon Cala still feels like the primary story here as we now see how things unfold after the attempt to mess with Rey and the rest the last time around as they’re now handcuffed and facing some potential justice. Leia’s looking for some kind of smoothing over here but Rey ends up going all in on it when she sees a chance for one on one battle with Chadkol. Of course, he’s actually able to substitute himself with some Republic-era robot which leads to a rushed fight sequence that turns into an all-out brawl. But even that doesn’t really solve anything and we get another assassination-style attempt on the group. I like the potential of Mon Cala, especially as the Quarren have been very underused in the comics, but it’s just not clicking well enough.
Poe and Finn’s story is more about keeping on the movie as the bounty hunters are after them and that works nicely enough but without any real tension as you don’t expect anything significant here. That one of them is a shapeshifter leaves me a little off as well but mostly I continue to really just dislike the way they write out BB-8 as BeeBee-Ate. That takes me out of it completely. We do get a nice bit of material that helps to bolster more of the whole bromance thing between the two as neither is ready to abandon the other and they get pretty good at watching out for each other but it’s the kind of thing that’s just leaning a bit into the fic side it feels like unless the final film does make something a bit more out of it. Their place in this issue is pretty much all combat action otherwise.
In Summary:
I had enjoyed the last couple of Journey series that we had and this one started off with some potential but this installment feels like it’s spinning its wheels a bit while coming a bit more off-model. I’m not looking for photorealistic but the physical aspects of Leia leans a lot more toward her original trilogy era than her resistance era. I do like some of the threads that weave through this but it’s mostly just action without much else to give it any real meat.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 9+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: October 23rd, 2019
MSRP: $4.99
