I liked the story presented here; it flowed very nicely, nothing was too
simple until the end, and it was very nice to see the Jedi Masters as real
people. Unfortunately, the art was not as sophisticated as some others,
and actually detracted from the story for me.
A lot of the art didn't show clearly what was happening. Even going
through it several times, and deducing from later events didn't make clear
some of the things that happened. One key moment that illustrates this
takes place at the end, when Council member Micah Giiett destroys a large force
of Yinchorri. I assume he thrust his lightsaber into the fuel chamber of
the tank, thus making it explode, but I can't be sure.
Some of the visuals were nicely rendered, but I was more interested in what
happened, rather than how it was depicted. Like when we get to see Yoda
in action! I loved that page, and the way he deflected a blaster bolt
with his hand, then shoved a Yinchorri backwards with little effort. It
wasn't drawn in an amazing way, but it was amazing to see nonetheless, just
for the fact that it happened! I knew that deflection was not just a
Dark Side power, as it was depicted by Vader in Empire. I wonder if he learned it
from Yoda? I want to see more of Yoda in action!
The Yinchorri were not well drawn either. They could have been
anything from any other series, but reminded me more of a sort of reptilian
hippo... The battle scenes containing them were nothing more than a mass
of blurry carnage. In fact, lots of stuff was blurry in this
book.
Two pieces of art that I loved, though: Plo Koon's facemask is great, and
the shot of Coruscant on the back cover of this graphic novel is a
masterpiece. I don't know if it's from the movie directly, but could
have been, and it's great.
The story follows four groups of Jedi, sent out by the Jedi Council because
a Knight and Padawan were horribly killed and mutilated while on a peace
mission to the Yinchorri people. It seems that the Yinchorri have a need
for war, and they feel that the time is ripe for them to start taking Republic
planets for their own domination. Of course, there is a thread that runs
through to the Phantom Menace, and that is the fact that these people are
being manipulated.
After every major step of the story, we cut back to Darth Sidious and Darth
Maul. Here, the story turns a little murky, as well. Darth Maul
seems way too whiny, pleading with his master to go out and kill Jedi, and
take control of the Yinchorri. But Sidious knows that it is too early to
reveal the return of the Sith. He relies on subordinates, and I'm not
sure what he has really gained by the end. I think he gives the
Yinchorri too much credit when he tells Maul that they would have been a grave
threat to their new rule if the Jedi had not subdued them. They never
seemed like a real threat to the Republic to me. It felt more like a
local scuffle gone out-of-hand. He doesn't let Maul go out because
whether the Jedi won or lost, Sidious won. He claims that if the
Yinchorri won, Jedi would die. Jedi did die, and Maul is right -with him
there, more would have died. But if the Yinchorri won, then Sidious and
Maul would have had to deal with them, even if they killed many Jedi. Anyway, it's a little confusing
just what he wanted.
Sidious has sent an attack on the Jedi Temple. With some of the most
powerful Jedi out in Yinchorri space, it is still a suicide mission, something
that Yoda recognizes. One Jedi sentry dies, and another dies in the
ensuing battle -which we don't get to see. But it must have been a great
battle, with all those Jedi, especially Yoda, defending their Temple.
Nothing comes from Yoda's interrogation, though, which is unfortunate. They learn the possible location of the Yinchorri headquarters at the exact
same time as Adi Gallia's group does, making that research pretty useless,
too.
The three groups of Jedi sent into the Yinchorri system are ambushed as
soon as they exit hyperspace, which tells them that somebody knows their plans
already! The first group, led by Adi Gallia, is also ambushed on the
water planet onto which they land. But they manage to capture a
Devaronian who seems to be in charge. No problem there, but they figure the headquarters are not on this sparsely populated planet. They take
the Devaronian with them, and he escapes while they are helping to rescue Mace
Windu's group. But he contacts his cousin, who is the real leader of the
rebellion, and who is located at the headquarters. The Jedi are able to
trace the call and call in the Republic fleet.
The second group of Jedi is led by Micah Giiett and Plo Koon. They go
to a floating city on a dense atmosphere planet, able to land only because of a
trick they played on the attacking Yinchorri. They jettisoned all the
escape pods, letting the fighters go after "prisoners" instead of
the ship, which they piloted down erratically, as if in free-fall. They, too are ambushed,
but manage to escape by climbing on top of the floating structure and
disconnecting one of its balloon supports, flying off into the air, while Adi
Gallia's ship comes in to rescue them. They didn't have time to find
anything out, but seemed to figure that the headquarters couldn't be on that
planet, either.
They fly to rendezvous with Mace Windu's group, which also includes Qui-Gon
Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan find traces of a giant army
on this planet, but not like they would expect if the headquarters was located
there. They are attacked, and though it's nice to see the Jedi in
action, the battle follows standard plotting. Even though they are being
overrun by the Yinchorri, the battles stop long enough to either transfer
information more than one sentence at a time, and to give their injured or
dead (I can't figure out which is which) time to be mourned.
Back on Coruscant, Chancellor Valorum brings in every political favor he is
owed, and makes compromises he wouldn't otherwise make to get the majority he
needs in the senate to send a task force to defeat the Yinchorri. That
shows right away how Valorum's power was eroding even as far back as
this.
The task force does arrive, and in the weakest part of the story,
demolishes the Yinchorri fleet. The Devaronian, Vilmarh Grahrk, escapes,
and the headquarters surrenders without him to lead them. As I said, I
don't think the Yinchorri were much of a threat, especially surrendering so
quickly.
The Jedi sure lost a lot of ships in this story! Mace doesn't worry
about it, but I wonder how they get the Council to continue to fund them like
that. It is noted that the Jedi are starting to go out of favor even
now. It must get even harder later on.
I really liked most of the Jedi featured in this story. It was not
very clear who was a Master and who was a Padawan, though. I thought
there were too many Masters present, and not enough Padawans. This would
have been an ideal situation for Padawans to try and handle.
Unfortunately, it mostly turned into a brawl. I do wonder why even
Council members call each other Master. If this is based on Martial
Arts, like I believe, only a lower-ranking person should use
"Master" when talking to or about a superior. Otherwise it
gets cluttered up, especially in the space of a comic bubble.
Two more of the Jedi lessons received really good treatment here,
too. One is cortosis ore, which was last seen in Vision of the
Future,
where it was used to ridiculous effect. Here, the Yinchorri have put
their hands on armor made from the rare mineral. The demonstration given
by Giiett was well done. Also enjoyable was the cup game Giiett played
on the Padawans. He used their expectations to fool them. Thinking
that he had placed a black marble under one cup and white ones under the
others, they easily picked out which cup held the black one (like the shell
game). But Giiett fooled them by swapping the black marble for another
white marble, so they were wrong with their guess and expectations. It
also worked to good effect in inspiring a similar trick so that Plo Koon's
team could outwit the attacking Yinchorri with their escape pods.
The banter between Giiett and Plo Koon made the character seem more real,
which was the point, since we have to care about him when he dies in the tank
incident. It is a heroic death, because he draws the Yinchorri away from
the escaping Jedi, but I don't think the Yinchorri would have stopped for him,
because, as they said, he was dying. What are Jedi secrets to the
Yinchorri? They are already immune to mind tricks, and they don't seem
to fear the Jedi, especially with the cortosis armor. But Giiett
leaves a spot open on the Jedi Council, which will not be filled until Prelude
to Rebellion, not too long after.
The other Jedi characters (except for K'kruhk, who seemed both an oaf and
very naive) were also very interesting, and I enjoyed them. The story
was a good one, and I enjoyed the four points of view, even though none of
them actually got any information. It would have been less costly if the
holocron had been read correctly the first time -none of the Jedi would have
put foot on the planets in that case. The art, however, was not as
interesting or sophisticated as I would have liked. Mostly cartoonish
and very 2D in rendering, it certainly could have been a lot better.
by Warren Dunn, all rights reserved.
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