Why So Blu?

Star Wars: Obi-Wan & Anakin #1

Issue 1 of Star Wars: Obi-wan & Anakin came out 1/6/16, and I’m going to talk about it, because it’s Star Wars, and what other explanation is needed? Before all that though, let’s take a look at how Marvel came to produce first issues for Star Wars for the first time in decades.

The juggernaut that is Disney already owned Marvel Comics by the time they acquired Lucas Films, so the writing had to be on the wall for Dark Horse Comics, who’d been publishing Star Wars comics for twenty-five years. After all, what were the chances that Disney would allow one of their properties to compete with another? The answer is no chance.

So returning Star Wars to Marvel was inevitable, and it was a return, as Marvel had the original license back in the eighties, before the franchise lost steam, and was sold to Dark Horse. The questions were not if, but when, and also, how good would they be?

Dark Horse put out some stellar Star Wars titles over the years, including Dark Times, Crimson Empire, Legacy, and Republic, to name a few of the many. But that was almost part of the problem, that there were so very many coming out. The Dark Horse run went thousands of years into the future, and the past. It had time to get out there… way, way out there, such that it was tough for a casual fan to know what was going on if they picked up a random issue. Heck, even when Marvel originally had Star Wars, they produced some questionable material themselves. Jax the green space rabbit, anybody?

So now Star Wars has returned to Marvel, and we all waited with baited breath to see what they could do, where they would go with it, with the board swept clean of all the Dark Horse extensive continuity. The answer? They nailed it right on the head. Cue huge sigh of relief.

The comics have been dialed back to the characters we know and love, in the timeline we’re familiar with. We get to see Han, Leia, Luke, Lando, Chewie, and Vader. The first pages even have opening crawls, straight out of the films. We’re on home turf now. As for the talent? The people Marvel assigned to these books reads like a who’s who in comics. Jason Aaron, Kieron Gillen, Mark Waid, Charles Soule, Gerry Duggan on scripts with artists like Alex Maleev and Terry Dodson on art, to name just a few. Don’t believe how well Disney did by rebooting? Star Wars issue one sold over a million copies, and set the record for single issue sales in 2015. Yes, Marvel is good hands, and Star Wars is in good hands.

Marvel has been putting out multiple Star Wars mini-series, starting with Princess Leia, then Lando, and most recently Chewbacca in addition to their ongoing series. All of which were fun, Lando in particular, and brings us to their latest mini-series, Obi-Wan & Anakin.

This book, written by Charles Soule and illustrated by Marco Checchetto, takes place between Episodes I & II. Obi-wan has only recently become a full-fledged knight, and has kept his word to his master, Qui-Gon Jinn to train Anakin Skywalker as his Padawan. It’s a slice of the timeline we haven’t seen, especially in the now strictly defined canon. It has to be tough to write supplemental fiction during a time frame when the reader knows the ultimate outcome, however this book has added some new and very intriguing elements to the epic of Anakin Skywalker. It also helps flesh out the relationship between master and learner, which was lacking in the films. The Mustafar scene from Revenge of the Sith carries much more weight if one has in depth knowledge of just how close these two legendary Jedi were, what they went through together, and what they meant to one another. For these reasons I applaud the undertaking, and delivery. It couldn’t have been easy.

I did feel that the artwork was jarring. It was, at times, difficult to follow the action from one panel to the next. The art is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t fluid. It felt more like looking at a series of still lives, which were intended to convey action, but instead felt flat. I found myself having to revisit panels multiple times just to ascertain what exactly was going on. At that point, it’s a bit distracting, but by no means a deal breaker. I wouldn’t consider even for a moment not reading the rest of the series, I’m far too intrigued in this era of the continuity for that.

With only one issue out so far, it’s hard to say where this series will fall on the hierarchy of Marvel Star Wars books, but I certainly can’t wait to see where it goes. I give it three out of five power converters, because considering the Marvel Star Wars titles released so far, this book has some stiff competition to live up to.