Star Wars: Jedi of the Republic-Mace Windu collects the five issue mini-series of the same name written by Matt Owens with art by Denys Cowan and Roberto Poggi (a flashback story in issue 4 has art by Edgar Salazar and Scott Hanna). It was published on February 27, 2018.
Synopsis
Yoda? You okay, buddy?
Shortly after the beginning of the Clone Wars, Mace Windu finds himself troubled over the Jedi’s new role as military leaders; however, there is little time for reflection. Mace is chosen to lead a team of Jedi to the planet Hissrich to investigate recent Separatist activity there. Mace chooses Kit Fisto, Prosset Dibs, and Rissa Manno to accompany him. Prosset is blind, but has great intuition in the Force; Rissa is a newly appointed knight with a knack for engineering. They arrive on the planet to find Separatist forces being led by the mercenary droid AD-W4 attempting to harvest the planet’s plant life for use as a fuel source. Since the planet receives sunlight for about an hour a month, the plants have evolved to take in and store as much energy as possible. The planet’s inhabitants live in underground dwellings illuminated by the plant’s glowing roots. While Mace and Rissa pursue the enemy, Kit and Prosset are left to protect the natives. When they fail to keep them alive, Prosset is overcome by the Jedi’s role in perpetuating the violence of war. He challenges Mace and accuses the council of sending them there for the same reason as the Separatists, to secure a power supply. The two cross sabers and Mace incapacitates his fellow Jedi. The three remaining Jedi raid the Separatist base and manage to stop the shipment. Mace defeats AD-W4. Back on Coruscant, Prosset Dibs is brought before the council. He says he has cut ties with the Jedi and tries to goad them into executing him as is appropriate to their new military roles. Instead, he is sentenced to work in the library in the hope that he can be rehabilitated. In a flashback in issue 4, we see a young Padawan Mace accompany his master Cyslin Myr to the planet Mathas to apprehend a man who claims to be a Jedi and is exploiting the local population’s fear and suffering at the hands of an ongoing plague in order to enrich himself. We see an example here of Mace’s penchant for anger needing to be reined in.
Review
Young Mace is on the case!
This is another one of those mini-series that’s good, not great. There’s a lot of good potential here with the debate over the role of the Jedi in the war, a renegade Jedi, and a bad guy who can put up a pretty good fight with a Jedi. The thing is, it just feels like stuff we’ve seen before. As is often the case, the flashback was the most interesting part of the story for me. We’ve seen plenty of stories of Mace Windu during the Clone Wars. How cool would it have been to see a full length story of his younger days? Show us a Mace whose place in the Jedi Order is not as secure as we see it in the PT/TCW era. Show us a Mace who is still learning and who has yet to fully integrate his darker tendencies into his personality. You get glimpses of that in the flashback, and they try to tie it into the present story, but I was left wanting more. Again, the “A” story is not terrible; there is a lot of discussion about what kind of role, if any, the Jedi should be taking in this conflict. There is the overconfidence of the Order as they choose their path; little knowing that it will lead to their downfall. There is the irony that Prosset Dibs, the blind man, sees clearly the folly of the war and yet his actions seem tainted by the Dark Side. Ultimately, what I got from this story is that the Jedi are fighting the wrong war for the right reasons; but, again, that’s something we already knew.
Dibs and Windu face off.
As for the art in this story, it is, to put it simply, very disappointing. There is some noticeable improvement by the time you get to the third chapter; but Yoda, who appears in the first and fifth issues, looks awful except for one panel in issue five. Even though the art gets better, it is, overall inconsistent and at times rough looking. This is perplexing to me because Denys Cowan is, by no stretch of the imagination, a bad artist. In fact, he is a very good artist whose previous work with DC and Marvel has earned him near-legendary status. However, I think his finished art stands or falls based on who is doing the inking. I have noticed that in nearly all of the new SW comics the same artist does the pencils and the inks. I don’t know how prevalent that is throughout the industry now, but Cowan comes from a time when that was very rare, practically unheard of. In this case Roberto Poggi did the inks and I can’t help but wonder how the finished art would have looked if Cowan had been paired with the person who inked the flashback story, Scott Hanna. I think another factor here is that Cowan is mostly known for his work in the superhero genre. There, even with characters that have been around for decades, it is expected that an artist will put their own particular stamp on a character. However, with licensed characters like our Star Wars heroes, the expectation is that they will closely resemble the actors who portrayed them or the way they appear in an animated series. As for the art in the flashback, I have no problem with it. Edgar Salazar and Scott Hanna (another near-legendary figure as far as I’m concerned) provide some solid stuff.
Notes
AD-W4
Although we are not told specifically when this story takes place; it seems to be fairly early in the Clone Wars.
We learn that Mace was trained by Jedi Master Cyslin Myr, a Mirialian. In “Legends” Mace’s master was T’ra Saa.
Prosset Dibs’s library exile apparently doesn’t do him much good. *SPOILER* He will later join the Inquisitorius as Tenth Brother and appear in Charles Soule’s Darth Vader comic series.
Prosset Dibs is a Miraluka. He is the only Miraluka to be depicted in the new canon thus far; however, the species made numerous appearances in the old EU.
Comic Pack Wish List:
Prosset Dibs, Rissa Mano, Mace Windu in Hissrich mission outfit, AD-W4, Mace Windu (Padawan), Cyslin Myr.
Score:
Like Chewbacca before him, Mace Windu gets a mini-series that just doesn’t exploit the full potential of a fan-favorite character: 2 Skulls.
