“Clash of the Droids”
Creative Staff:
Story: Marc Guggenheim
Art: Salva Espin / David Messina
Colors: Israel Silva / Bryan Valenza
Letterer: VC’s Joe Sabino
What They Say:
THE BATTLE OF THE CIRCUITRY! R2 VS. BT! 000 VS. IG-88! – A DARK DROIDS TIE-IN! ARTOO’S adventure across the galaxy to rescue his friend SEE-THREEPIO continues! But does Artoo need rescuing himself? Guest-starring 000, IG-88 and 4-LOM!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the main storyline for this tie-in event working better for me than I expected, we also get this spin-off miniseries that focuses on some of the droids that are out there. The four-issue run has Marc Guggenheim writing with this issue and we get Salva Epsin handling the artwork with Israel Silva coloring it as we get the story coming together. This series initially felt like it was going to be an anthology book but the two main stories in the first came together well enough. As I said before, I enjoy the droids of Star Wars but it’s such a complicated thing as presented when you get into the details of their existence and the structure of it all that you can cringe with how some elements unfold.
This issue has a certain level of fun about it but there’s also some diminishing returns. I’ve enjoyed Triple-Zero since his introduction a few years back, for the most part, but he and Beetee are best used in limited ways. And this issue doesn’t do that and makes things worse by being so heavily droid-focused that there’s a lot of non-dialogue action sequences that you just burn through quickly. They work well in film and TV but less so in this medium, at least for me. The gist of things is that Artoo has managed to convince Triple-Zero that they need to work together so they can help their respective companions. Triple-Zero isn’t exactly keen on this, and doesn’t want to interrupt Beetee since he’s off having fun even if corrupted by the Scourge as it’s killing a lot of people. But at the same time, Artoo is able to convince him enough to work together to try and find a solution.
That it’s trying to do some electrocution is an amusing things and Artoo eventually tries it in a small way before Triple-Zero takes it to such an over-the-top way that you have to laugh. Thankfully, Beetee is out of commission for the rest of the issue and doesn’t recover quickly and that lets us focus more on the sudden arrival of IG-11 to collect the two murderbots and has to deal with Artoo as well. Of course, it gets more complicated when 4-Lom shows up to try and collect on Artoo for his own thing and it just gets kind of chaotic with the action and all the dialogue because of the naming conventions. When it’s just one droid used sparingly, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. When you get as many as you get here, it definitely becomes too much for me to enjoy.
In Summary:
D-Squad has its moments and it is good to see the droids getting their own storyline in trying to deal with the greater situation as well as their own friends without a lot of meat sacks running about. But it also shows the limitations of some of them and that they’re generally not going to be leading character candidates for a lot of reasons. It’s not bad but it’s just not my jam that much and isn’t doing much with the larger story. It’s amusing to see Triple-Zero and Artoo team-up and it leaves me curious to see how it unfolds as it progresses, but mostly you just kind of want Chopper to come back in and smack Triple-Zero around and make it clear who the real war criminal is here.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: October 25th, 2023
MSRP: $4.99
