“Ben”
Creative Staff:
Story: Christopher Cantwell
Art: Adriana Melo, Wayne Faucher
Colors: Dono Sanchez-Almara
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
Obi-Wan has closed his journals for now and looks ahead as night falls and the sandstorm that has sequestered him begins to clear. He discovers something unexpected in the hazards of the Jundland Wastes…a squad of ambushed stormtroopers left to die. One still has a fighting chance…and Obi-Wan may very well risk everything to save a single injured imperial stormtrooper that can’t help but remind Kenobi of the clones he served with so long ago.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the new limited series hitting Disney+ as this series gets underway, the second issue arrives after it ended and that’s just a weird feeling, especially since it’s practically two months between releases. The timing did work well for me in that I wrapped up reading the novel about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn that takes place while he’s still a Padawan. This series has Christopher Cantwell handling the writing duties and he’s definitely been a writer whose work I enjoy (and get frustrated by) and I liked what he brought to the series so far. With this issue, we get Adriana Melo and Wayne Faucher handling the pencils and inks respectively with Dono Sanchez-Almara handling the color design. It’s generally solid throughout as we get a low-key Tattooine affair. and it definitely helps with the color design to make it feel authentic enough.
With this one being the final installment, it’s no surprise that it takes us closer to the time before his end. We’ve seen him writing the tales of the past and reflecting upon them and the general idea here is that he’s heading out in search of some power cells as what he has is winding down, among other supplies. It’s not a bad setup to get him out into the world but it comes at a time when a faction of Tusken Raiders have done their job in stealing some power cells from the local Imperial garrison and getting away with it. That has the local commander sending out a group of Stormtroopers to hunt them down and kill them because they’re so poorly regarded as living beings and it’s a show of force about crossing the Empire.
Unsurprisingly, the Tusken basically have set a series of traps in order to eliminate the Imperials because the end goal was to get their hands on some of those weapons in addition to the power cells. It’s a pretty decent trap that the Stormtroopers fall into and with some narration by Obi-Wan we see how he takes advantage by scavenging a bit afterward for what he needs. The problem is that one of them survived and he’s giving aid as is the Jedi way. That leads to the trooper being all out of sorts in general but when he wakes somewhat and sees the lightsaber, first on Obi-Wan’s hip and then in his hovel, he tries to take it an escape. It’s not exactly unclear what Cantwell is going for here but it has that kind of general sadness about it and more so because of Obi-Wan remembering the Clones and simply acknowledging that this young man is just as unaware of the big picture as they were.
In Summary:
I didn’t go into this series which expectations because I understood what kind of project it was and what limitations it was likely under. What I got was a number of standalone tales with a good framing that allowed us to see more tales about Obi-Wan across his life. That made for some stories more enjoyable than others, though this last one has the least Obi-Wan in it while trying to say something about how he never gave up being what a Jedi is. There are plenty of complications that come from this character being expanded upon instead of a mystery and it generally makes him more problematic because of his focus in how he protects Luke. But the individual tales themselves were a lot of fun overall and I like getting more time in the Clone Wars era period with him. It’s pretty nicely done overall and I liked the rotating cast of artists that worked on it and the variety to the tales overall. It was a nice complement to the recent live-action limited series.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: September 14th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
