Force War

Dawn of the Jedi: Force War

Author: John Ostrander

Artist: Jan Duursema

Medium: Comic

Publication Date: November 2013 – March 2014

Timeline Placement: 25,792 BBY

Series: Dawn of the Jedi

We jump forward in time one year to find the Tythan system under siege by the Rakatan fleet and their foot soldiers, mutated Rakatan warriors called Flesh Raiders, a name that sounds like it could also be any number of other perverse things. Daegen Lok, the completely insane slavemaster visionquest psycho from the last book, has been released from the Evil Moon of Bogan and put in charge of the Je’daii armies for some reason, while Master Ravioli, a bald and somewhat boring monk, commands the combined forces of Tython and the non-Je’daii worlds. Despite this he still contributes nothing to the plot. Xesh, emodouche protagonist, has taught the Je’daii how to manufacture Forcesabers, which have become their primary melee weapon against the similarly armed Flesh Raiders.

Redheaded love interest Shae Koda (and presumably Sek’nos Rath, Shae’s (best? I don’t even know) friend, as well but I don’t think it’s ever clarified) has been promoted from Je’daii Journeyer to Je’daii Ranger, a meaningless distinction with no bearing on the text. I guess Sek’nos and Trill, the Force-hunting double-agent sent by Predor Skal’nas the Big Evil Space Guy, are dating now, because sure, whatever. Poor, neglected Tasha Ryo, one of three equally prominent protagonists in the first volume, is marginalized even more in the finale. Since she sucks at fighting, she’s become a Je’daii “seer” and now just sits around with other seers, all of whom are nameless, trying to divine the future and see where the Rakata will strike next. She does nothing of consequence for the entire book until the end, where she dies. Spoiler alert!

We open with all our main characters (except Tasha, because she’s not even a main character anymore) engaged in battle on Shikaakwa. They kill a bunch of Flesh Raiders and beat back the Rakata forces with their armada of monsters (including Butch, the flying rancor-dragon!). You would think that these creatures wouldn’t be much use against the Rakata’s advanced technology and starships, but fortunately the Rakata’s Force Hounds apparently have their own beast-mounted air cavalry for some reason, and the Je’daii kick their ass. Also apparently Xesh’s armor-and-helmet look from the first volume wasn’t unique to him but was the generic Force Hound uniform, which makes his co-Hound Trill’s red bustier and leather pants even more ridiculous.

Some Flesh Raiders in action.

The allied Je’daii and non-Je’daii forces beat back the Rakata’s advance, and Sub-Predor Ceh’let, a female Rakata (which you can tell because she has a ponytail), is none too happy with how things are going. She confronts warlord Skal’nas about how much he sucks at winning wars and demands to know why he is so obsessed with capturing Tython. Skal’nas explains that the Rakata are slowly losing their connection to the Force.

[Continuity Note: All of the Rakata’s technology is powered through the Force, including their starship hyperdrives and navigation. In the videogame Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the player rediscovers the remnants of the long-forgotten Infinite Empire and learns that the Rakata were ultimately destroyed by a plague that cut them off from the Force. Unable to use their weapons or technology, the Rakata fell prey to mass slave revolts and lost control of their empire. By the time the game takes place, only a few tribes of Rakatan primitives remain on their lost homeworld, Rakata Prime (later retroactively renamed Lehon because continuity). What we are seeing in Dawn of the Jedi is the beginning of their downfall.]

Rakatan legend tells of a world so rich in the Force that it can renew the Rakata’s failed connection to it. This world also contains a Prime Gate, the greatest of the Kwa Infinity Gates. Unlike other Infinity Gates, which linked only to a sister gate on a single other world, the Prime Gate can instantly take you anywhere in the galaxy. Skal’nas plans to use this gate to make the Infinite Empire infinite in fact as well as in name. Ceh’let is flattered to be told all this and asks if Skal’nas plans for her to be his queen when he becomes Over-Predor of the empire. Skal’nas says, “No, I just wanted you to understand the prize you were losing out on before you died,” and vaporizes her with Force lightning.

Meanwhile, Xesh continues to be angsty. He has a nightmare wherein twisted Rakatan visages tell him he can never escape the darkness inside himself and wakes up screaming. Shae runs into his tent and confesses that she loves him and Xesh is like “. . . uhhhhhhh . . .” Shae turns to go but Xesh tries to make up for his comical awkwardness by telling her something about himself that no one else knows. “Xesh” is his slave name, but he has secretly renamed himself “Tau,” the only word from his native language that he remembers. It means “soul.” It is a stupid name.

I just threw up in my own mouth.

That said, this may explain why Sek’nos didn’t make anything out of Xesh and Trill both being named after Aurebesh letters, something I wondered about in the previous review. The implication, then, would seem to be that Aurebesh, the most commonly used alphabet in the Star Wars galaxy at the time of the films, originated as the Rakatan alphabet. So basically the Rakata are responsible for everything in Star Wars: the alphabet, the lightsaber, the hyperdrive, the Sith name “Darth,” spreading humans across the galaxy, turning Tatooine and Korriban into deserts, hyper-accelerating the foliage growth on Kashyyyk, creating the Twi’lek and Zabrak species, giving pyramidal holocron technology to the Sith, and forcibly driving the Celestials from the galactic stage (prior to the invention of the Rakata, the Celestials were the EU’s go-to ancient advanced civilization for explaining lingering cosmic mysteries). I love the Rakata but it’s a bit much, isn’t it?

Anyway, then Xesh and Shae fuck.

The next afternoon, Xesh, Daegen Lok, Ravioli, and for some reason Tasha Ryo convene a council of war in Hawk Ryo’s brother’s fortress, because they are friends with him now. Xesh says that this is the first time the Rakata have ever faced defeat (which is untrue, because they were driven out by the Sith species when they tried to annex their territory a few thousand years earlier, but John Ostrander probably didn’t read that obscure online reference article), and if they kill Predor Skal’nas, the Rakatan sub-predors will destroy themselves fighting for command. Daegen Lok helpfully adds that Xesh must have come up with that strategy by studying how Lok won the Despot War by killing Queen Hadiya.

I hate to admit it but I’m starting to get over Daegen Lok. His badass bearded crazy-person look from Prisoner of Bogan is gone; now he just has long greasy hair with a scruffy little goatee and wears sleeveless body armor and looks like a douchebag. Now that he’s got what he wanted, fulfilling his vision and becoming the commander of the Je’daii, he’s not that interesting or fun to read about anymore.

The Je’daii formulate a plan to attack the Rakatan base on Ska Gora and kill the predor. Trill informs her master, however, allowing him to set a trap. Many Je’daii are captured in the attack, including Xesh, Sek’nos, and Daegen Lok, and Trill deserts the Je’daii and returns to her master. Sek’nos is turned into a Force-battery to power a Rakatan ship, while Predor Skal’nas removes the memory block he placed on Xesh. Xesh remembers what happened aboard the Rakatan scout ship he arrived on. He had sent his “Force shadow” out to investigate Tython, and what Shae, Sek’nos, Tasha, and Lok (and presumably Lanoree Brock, although she isn’t mentioned) saw back in Force Storm was this shade, not a true vision from the Force. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be some “gotcha” plot twist because it means nothing and changes nothing, but there it is.

On secret orders from Predor Skal’nas, Xesh murdered his former master and all the Rakata on the ship so that Skal’nas could claim Tython for himself. He then intentionally crashed the ship, killing thousands of slaves on board. Xesh now remembers all the atrocities he has committed at the behest of the Rakata, killing innocents and enslaving planets for them (including the Sith planet, judging by the accompanying collage, but the timing on that doesn’t fit with established lore).

Honestly I had no idea that he had forgotten this much of his history; it was never made clear in the text. I’m not even sure what the point of Skal’nas hiding it from him was. Blocking Xesh’s memory of his mission to infiltrate the Je’daii and intentionally crashing his ship makes sense, so the Je’daii don’t sense any deception in him, but he remembers everything else about the Rakata and tries to kill the Je’daii when he first meets them anyway, so why erase the extent of his evil? If he doesn’t even know what a bad person he is in the previous two volumes, his paper-thin character arc becomes transparent. This plot is kind of dumb.

But now that he remembers that he has done a lot of bad things, Xesh willingly rejoins the Rakata and submits to being Skal’nas’s slave, because that’s totally what it makes sense for him to do and isn’t at all contrived, right? After interrogating Daegen Lok, Skal’nas believes that the Prime Gate is hidden at the bottom of the Chasm, the seemingly bottomless pit on Tython where Lok had his vision. The defenses protecting it are what drives Je’daii mad when they venture too deep into the Chasm. Lok says that he misjudged Xesh and never realized how much darker and more cunning he was than Lok himself. Because I guess we’re still supposed to buy Lok McCrazy VisionQuest as this super-evil psychotic mastermind despite him failing at basically everything he tries to do in this book.

Skal’nas intends to stop the Je’daii from learning his plan to take the Prime Gate by neutralizing the seers. Using Xesh and Trill as conduits to boost his power, he sends out their Force shadows just as Tasha and the other seers are having a vision of Tython being attacked. Xesh suddenly appears in their vision and somehow blinds them, physically and to the Force. So for the rest of the book Tasha goes around with her eyes all white and charred lol. The seers have bought the Je’daii just enough time to begin preparations for the Rakatan assault, although they do not know its true target.

So the Rakata attack Tython and Xesh and Skal’nas take Lok down to the Chasm to find the Prime Gate. Xesh says that the only way to pass the barrier in the Chasm without going mad is to have nothing by the spoked-wheel symbol of the Tho Yor in your mind when you go through. I’ll take your word for it, buddy. They descend into the Chasm on jetpacks, leaving Daegen Lok chained to a rock for the Flesh Raiders to eat. I have no idea why they even brought him to the planet with them in the first place. He didn’t have any more information to give them; just kill him on the ship. But since they didn’t do that, we get a scene where Lok wrestles a Forcesaber away from a Flesh Raider and cuts himself free, shouting, “This is what I saw in my vision! This is who I am! Invincible! Unstoppable! Come to me, fools, and die!” Then he gets knocked down and begs for mercy.

Forunately, Sek’nos Rath escapes from the Rakata and arrives just in time to save him, having been drawn to the Chasm by sensing Xesh in the Force. Shae arrives shortly thereafter, riding Butch (!) and followed by Fake Morpheus, her Je’daii Master who was briefly important way back in the first volume. I think Hawk Ryo and Jane Krakowski do literally nothing in this story arc. Lok implants the Tho Yor symbol in Shae’s mind and Butch carries them both into the Chasm.

Okay, his real name is Quan-Jang, but does it really matter?

Trill shows up and makes fun of Sek’nos for his “balance” being so weak compared to the dark side, but his rage gives him the power to overcome her. He declares that he doesn’t care if he lives or dies, just so long as he gets to kill her. “No, Sek’nos! Don’t let the darkness consume you! Do not become them! You are Je’daii!” cries Morpheus. Having knocked out Trill, Sek’nos is convinced by this rousing speech to spare her life at the last second. “YAAAAAARGH!” he shouts, then slings her unconscious body over his shoulder and walks out of the story forever. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to infer he does with her afterward but the options are not looking good.

Not that Trill was a great character or anything, but I like how she didn’t even fight Xesh in this final story arc, let alone resolve the weird grudge she bore against him for “betraying” their friendship. It was pretty obvious to me in the previous arc that they were setting up for Xesh to reveal that the reason he suggested she be given to Predor Skal’nas after kicking her ass wasn’t to diss her but so he wouldn’t have to kill her. But no, I guess her pseudo-romance plot with Sek’nos was a way more appropriate note for that character to end on.

At the bottom of the Chasm, Skal’nas and Xesh have found the Prime Gate. While Shae tries to talk Xesh out of being evil again, Lok battles Sek’nos. He tries to use his signature “Mind Twist” trick on the predor, but like what happened with Xesh, the Rakata’s mind is too dark for him to endure. Lok starts freaking out and Skal’nas runs him through with a Forcesaber. Really, dude, that trick of yours kind of sucks.

Meanwhile, Tasha Ryo and a cardboard cutout called Ters Sendon are trying to consult with A’nang’s holocron for help. For reasons never explained, Tasha is still the only one ever able to activate the device, so Ters Sendon cheats the plot and channels the Force through Tasha into the holocron. A’nang’s avatar appears and Tasha tells him that the Rakata are invading Tython. A’nang tells her that he can return the Force to her so that she can awaken the Tho Yor to defend the planet, something only a Je’daii seer can do (good thing she got that job!), but it will kill her. Ters Sendon says, “Stop, don’t, come back.”

Tasha takes the holocron to some giant pit filled with light in the Je’daii temple above the Chasm. She levitates into the column of light, which heals her eyes because, duh, why wouldn’t it. “I now understand who created the Tho Yor . . . and why . . .” she says. Is it just me or was this already fairly obvious? The Kwa created the Tho Yor to defend Tython after they failed to stop the Rakata the first time. We never find out what exactly was revealed to her, however, because she explodes.

In the Chasm, the Prime Gate opens at Skal’nas’s touch, becoming a window onto a multitude of worlds. Shae continues pleading with Xesh to no effect; he still goes to stand with Skal’nas, but offers her the chance to go with them. She refuses and starts talking about love and forgiveness or something, but Skal’nas is like “Jesus, will you shut up already?” and blasts her with Force lightning. Skal’nas claims that love is a lie, power is everything, and with the Prime Gate, he is power. “You are meat,” Xesh corrects him, and attacks. So really the power of love did nothing to dissuade him, it was just some guy messing with his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Tasha’s death activates the Tho Yor and they start shooting lasers everywhere and blowing up the Rakatan ships. The pillar of light that annihilated Tasha blasts into the Chasm, destroying the Prime Gate (pssst, nobody tell Skal’nas that there’s a Gree hypergate he could use to do the same thing, it’s right next-door, nobody say anything and maybe he won’t notice). “Betrayer!” Skal’nas shouts as he crosses blades with Xesh. “This is not betrayal,” says Xesh. “This is rebellion.” Just like in Star Wars! He disembowels the predor.

Famous Last Words: “GYAAAAH!” – Predor Skal’nas

For some reason, Shae and Lok are both still alive. They don’t have enough jetpacks to get back to the surface before the Chasm collapses, but just then the true hero of the story returns to save the day. Butch the flying rancor bravely risks her life by coming back to get them and carries them to safety. “I am not your hound. I am not your slave. I am not Xesh,” Xesh says to Skal’nas’s dissolving bones. “I am Tau.”

Everyone’s always in favor of saving Hitler’s brain, but when you put it in the body of a flying rancor, suddenly you’ve gone too far.

Some time later, the rest of the Rakatan fleet has been destroyed by either the Tho Yor, infighting among the various sub-predors, or the remaining ships of the Tythan worlds. The Je’daii decide to renounce their Forcesabers and go back to using regular swords, because constantly drawing on the dark side to power the weapons has put the order in peril. Daegen Lok refuses to give up his weapon, however, and claims that those who follow him won’t do so either. The Je’daii threaten to send him back to Bogan, but he says he’ll never let them put him there again: “It’s no place for a hero.” Well, at least he got a little of his coolness back at the very end.

Elsewhere, Xesh and Shae make out, then walk off to go backpacking across Tython. THE END!

Meditations

Frankly this last Dawn of the Jedi arc kind of sucked, and I can’t help feeling that the series as a whole ended up a failure. The setting and premise had a ton of potential, but very little of it made it into the plot or the characters. I don’t doubt that a lot of that is due to the license transfer to Marvel Comics killing the series prematurely, but even before this truncated conclusion, the story wasn’t being told in the best way it could have been. Xesh is a boring, lifeless character and a weak protagonist, and this setting was already rich and detailed enough to sustain a story without immediately introducing a brooding emo doofus from the outside galaxy.

Like I’ve said before, I love the Rakata and I loved seeing them at the height of their power in this series, but the story may have been better served by slowly building up the Tythan worlds and all the characters and factions that inhabit them over several issues or arcs before bringing in the Rakata. Of course, for that to happen the series would have had to run longer than 15 issues, and even before losing the Star Wars license Dark Horse Comics was notorious for canceling some of their most promising or creative titles when they were barely off the ground. Chalk it up to the hazards of the medium’s market.

I’m not sure why but I also enjoyed the art a lot less as the series went on. I won’t say it got worse, exactly, but there was so much screaming and snarling and spitting that characters were drawn a lot uglier and became less pleasant to look at. Lok’s, Xesh’s, Shae’s, and even Tasha’s character designs lost a lot of their uniqueness after their first appearances, their clothes and hair becoming more homogeneous and bland, less visually arresting. I don’t know much about comic books but that’s probably the last thing you want to happen in yours.

To discuss this volume in particular, though, it feels like watching a TV show that was canceled unexpectedly so the writers threw together one last episode to try to wrap everything up. I don’t know what John Ostrander and Jan Duursema’s (despite Ostrander being the sole writer, they both collaborated on the story) original plans were if the series had been allowed to continue unmolested, but presumably we wouldn’t have immediately jumped a year into the Rakatan invasion.

I suspect that that story arc would have ended much the same, however: with the Rakata’s defeat only marking the beginning of the Force Wars (plural), which according to previous lore were supposed to last ten years and involve the followers of the light and dark sides fighting one another with Force-imbued swords. The next arc probably would have seen the Je’daii, now wielding metal swords again, swaying from their ridiculous “balance” philosophy to the Force’s light side in order to combat Daegen Lok and his dark-side devotees. Because for a series called Dawn of the Jedi, these three arcs were really about anything but.

Speaking of balance, one thing that came up throughout Force War that I didn’t mention in the summary because it affected nothing was the idea that the war against the Rakata was seriously impeding the Je’daii’s ability to maintain their internal balance between the light and the dark. Well no shit, you idiots; you’re exclusively using weapons that only work if you give in to the dark side. That’s stupid. It’s never even adequately explained why the Je’daii need the Forcesabers at all. The Flesh Raiders wield them, and it was shown earlier that Forcesabers cut through Je’daii swords, but later on the timeline both the Jedi and Sith will wield metal swords made lightsaber-proof through the Force. Why didn’t the Je’daii just do that? Did they just not think of it?

The Je’daii most shown to be struggling with the dark side throughout this series is Shae Koda, the first Je’daii able to activate a Forcesaber. In this arc, there are several scenes of her giving in to her anger while battling the Rakatan forces, while Master Morpheus cautions her to control her feelings and stay in balance. This ultimately has nothing to do with anything; even after Xesh betrays her and rejoins the Rakata, she still forgives him and tries to save him despite him showing no signs of repentance. Why even bother stressing her anger issues so much in the final arc if they don’t factor at all into the climax or endgame?

Tasha Ryo may have been seriously shafted in terms of page-time, but at least she got to do something that mattered at the end. Shae doesn’t even get that. Nothing she does matters, only what’s done to her; it’s Skal’nas’s attack that prompts Xesh to action, not Shae’s words. From “Love Interest” to “Damsel in Distress” to “Plot Device,” the character arc of Shae Koda must be one of the least rewarding of any major character in the saga (I should probably cross my fingers when I say that).

Overall, okay first arc, pretty good second, fairly dismal third, although not entirely by the fault of the writers. I could say more about Sek’nos randomly dragging off Trill like a caveman, or the retired war criminals from the previous volume never being seen or mentioned again, or Hawk Ryo being completely marginalized after finally becoming interesting and losing a foot, or Daegen Lok becoming a huge pussy, but . . . nah. It’s disappointing, but I’m glad to be done with this series, and this era as a whole. It hasn’t been a promising start to our journey through the EU, and given that we’re about to encounter our first run of Kevin J. Anderson stories, it doesn’t look to be getting better any time soon.

2/5 Death Stars.

Prisoner of Bogan

Dawn of the Jedi: Prisoner of Bogan

Author: John Ostrander

Artist: Jan Duursema

Medium: Comic

Publication Date: November 2012 – May 2013

Timeline Placement: 25,793 BBY

Series: Dawn of the Jedi

It’s been two months since the concurrent events of Force Storm and Into the Void, and Predor Skal’nas, evil Rakatan overlord, is starting to wonder why he hasn’t heard anything from his brainwashed human slave, Xesh, and the Rakatan spies sent to Tython. Since we learn at the end of this story that Skal’nas had psychically programmed Xesh to murder his master and everyone on their ship, you’d think he might suspect that has something to do with why they haven’t called him back.

Another of Skal’nas’s slaves, an albino alien chick named Trill, reveals that she and Xesh were childhood BFF’s before they were forced to fight to the death and Xesh refused to kill her, thereby betraying her? I don’t get it. But Trill claims this former bond of theirs will allow her to track him so her boss sends her to join the plot.

Meanwhile, Xesh is hanging out on Bogan, the Evil Moon of Tython, with nothing to do but watch the Good Moon, Ashla, pass overhead every month. There is only one other prisoner on Bogan: an insane Je’daii named Daegen Lok, who was teased in both Force Storm and Into the Void and is finally about to make his debut and pull this series back from the brink of failure. He attacks Xesh for some reason, even though he wants his help. Xesh is about to kill him (which would put a real damper on his plans, I suspect) but Lok reveals that, like the three Je’daii Journeyers in Force Storm and Lanoree Brock in Into the Void, he too had a vision of Xesh’s arrival on Tython. Xesh is intrigued and the two agree to team up to escape their imprisonment.

Back on Tython, the Three Caballeros—Sek’nos Rath, Tasha Ryo, and Shae Koda—are being despondent about Xesh’s exile and how the Je’daii Council ignored their visions, just as they did Daegen Lok’s seven years ago (twist!). A minor character from Into the Void, Master Tave, tells them to grow up and quit their bitching, then sends them on various trivial assignments.

Elsewhere, we are introduced to General Rajivari, so far the only Je’daii Master we’ve met who dresses identically to the Jedi in the prequels. His character originated in BioWare’s aesthetically derivative MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, where he was named as one of the founding members of the Jedi Order. I assume he’s included here by way of apology for the lore inconsistencies in the previous volume, because he does dick-all in this book. (Also revealed in TOR is that Ravioli eventually went insane and was killed trying to destroy all of the Jedi, so at least there’s a happy ending to his character arc.)

Master Rajivari, the dullest first Jedi imaginable.

Daegen Lok takes Xesh to a crashed starfighter that he’s managed to mostly repair. Lok reveals that, seven years ago, he and his best friend, Hawk Ryo, ventured into the Chasm, a seemingly bottomless abyss on Tython rumored to drive insane any Je’daii who travels too far into its depths. In the Chasm, Lok had a vision of Xesh (although he believes it to be himself) leading an army and holding a “sword of flame,” which from what Xesh has told him he now believes to be Xesh’s Forcesaber. The Je’daii Council declared Lok mad and exiled him to Bogan until he recanted his vision, which he refused to do.

Lok asks Xesh if he can build more Forcesabers, but he’s unable to do so without a specific type of crystal. As luck would have it, Krev Coeur, the convenient crystal planet, is nearby. Xesh generates Force lightning to recharge the starfighter’s depleted power cells and they jet off to take their revenge.

At the Forge, Tython’s weapons manufacturing temple, the Je’daii are studying Xesh’s Forcesaber, which is basically a lightsaber that will only work if you use the dark side, and trying to figure out how to turn it on. Being Je’daii, practitioners of harmonic balance, they mostly fail. They give it to Shae to try, since she was the only one able to activate it before, but I guess she’s not on her period anymore so she can’t do it. Hawk Ryo walks in and turns it on without a problem, revealing that he was once exiled to the Evil Moon of Bogan and learned to master his own dark side there.

While Shae and Sek’nos dick around with that, Tasha Ryo, the most boring character from the first arc, gets the much more interesting task of investigating the alien remains recovered from Xesh’s ship. Unable to find anything in the Je’daii archives, she is taken by librarian Ters Sendon to an underground chamber and series of passageways that predate even the Je’daii’s 10,000-year-old library.

Here, Master Sendon shows her a floating crystal shaped like a Tho Yor. Tasha touches it and for the first time in Je’daii history the crystal comes to life, emitting a small hologram of a dude that looks like DC’s Darkseid after joining a monastic cult. The figure introduces itself as Master A’nang, last of the Tython Kwa, and offers to answer any questions they might have. Why this millennia-old recording speaks English (or “Basic,” as I guess it’s called in Star Wars) and uses the same name for Tython that the Je’daii use is conveniently not addressed.

A’nang reveals that his people, the Kwa, once traveled throughout the galaxy from their homeworld of Dathomir using technology called “Infinity Gates.” They settled on many worlds, spreading civilization and advanced technology to the more primitive races of the galaxy. Having read Into the Void, we know that not long ago there was a huge kerfuffle with some nut searching for a Gree hypergate beneath a ruined city. So why did ancient Tython need to be settled by both the Kwa and the Gree using nearly identical technology? Storytelling 101: Keep it simple, stupid.

Master A’nang prepares to lead a group of Kwa through an Infinity Gate.

Tasha shows Master A’nang an alien skull from the crashed ship. After flipping out and retreating inside his holocron, which is basically a flash drive you can access only by talking to Clippit the Microsoft Office Assistant, A’nang’s holographic avatar eventually explains how the Kwa unwittingly unleashed the Rakata on the galaxy. One of their Infinity Gates took them to the Rakatan homeworld, Lehon, where the Kwa tried to uplift the Rakata as they had other species. The Rakata repaid them by using their technology to take over the galaxy. The Kwa destroyed all their Infinity Gates and retreated back to Dathomir, powerless to stop the Rakata’s bloody conquest. So basically the whole history of Star Wars happened because of Seerow’s Kindness.

Meanwhile, Master Ravioli convinces the Je’daii Council to reexamine their stance on Daegen Lok’s vision in light of the dead Rakatan scouting party. A group of Je’daii that includes Shae, Sek’nos, and Hawk Ryo goes to Bogan to retrieve Lok and Xesh, only to find that they have escaped. They battle terentas, alchemically engineered creatures bred by the Je’daii to sniff out bombs. Because giant monsters with huge fangs and talons are ideally designed for that task. Presumably the terentas have some connection to the Jedi-hunting terentatek monsters from Knights of the Old Republic, but we’ll always be left wondering.

The Je’daii find a giant statue that Lok carved of himself holding a Forcesaber. Hawk Ryo, having perhaps tired of being Mr. Boring McBland, admits that he shared Lok’s vision when the two of them ventured into the Chasm seven years ago. Afterward, he refused to back up his BFF and let the council think Lok was insane. He also randomly goes crazy and tries to strangle the blonde chick he’s ostensibly in love with who looks kind of like Jane Krakowski. Hawk Ryo is awesome now!

With the Je’daii on their trail, Xesh and Lok crash their ship on Krev Coeur, where Xesh builds a new Forcesaber for each of them. Half of the Je’daii team, including Sek’nos and some others who are probably supposed to be important but aren’t, arrives on the planet and tries to take the darksiders into custody. Daegen Lok uses a “Mind Twist” to convince one of them she is on fire and then beats the crap out of another in a sword fight, while Xesh and Sek’nos duel and Sek’nos falls off a cliff.

Their pursuers defeated, Xesh and Lok steal a ship and head to Nox, the poisoned planet with the domed cities from Into the Void, to complete the next phase of Lok’s plan: gathering an army. Unbeknownst to them, Trill has finally tracked Xesh to the Tython system and happens to be flying by at the exact moment Sek’nos falls to his death, and he is saved by landing on her ship. I guess it was the will of the Force or something.

Lok explains to the reader that he was the Je’daii hero responsible for ending the Despot War twelve years ago when he seduced the evil Queen Hadiya and then murdered her in her bed. During the time he spent as her lover, he got to know all the generals and crime lords who supported her, and even though they hate his guts now, he’s convinced he can use their influence to build an army to fight off the coming Rakata invasion. Or . . . to fight the Je’daii in order to convince them that they have to fight the Rakata. I’m not completely clear on what his plan is. But it turns out to not matter anyway because his clandestine meeting with these retired war criminals is interrupted by the other Je’daii!

Daegen Lok and Queen Hadiya in an act of true love, I mean murder.

While Hawk Ryo and Daegen Lok duel one another, Shae pursues Xesh, outraged at him for betraying her trust by breaking out of jail and allegedly killing Sek’nos Rath. Their fight is prematurely aborted by an attack from a dianoga, the one-eyed tentacle monster from the trash compactor scene in Star Wars: A New Hope. The one in the movie lived in like six inches of water but this one is the size of a freaking house for some reason. It rises out of a nearby river and, true to tentacle monster form, grabs Shae and carries her off while completely ignoring Xesh.

Xesh dives into the water after her and kills the monster by stopping its heart with the Force. My bad, its hearts, because I guess it needs several. He brings Shae back to the surface but she isn’t breathing, so he gives her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and totally cops a feel out of frame. After reviving her, Xesh says, “You are my prisoner. You will not resist.” (Man, how many relationships have I started with that line?) He then carries her off into the night.

Elsewhere, Hawk chases Lok to the edge of a chasm. Lok claims that they were like brothers and Hawk should stand with him because they shared the same vision. Hawk denies this, even though he just admitted it was true a little while ago. Lok escapes by flinging himself into the abyss. Hawk tells the blonde Je’daii that Lok used a mind trick to make him think that Lok was there when he wasn’t, but I have no idea if that’s supposed to be the explanation for how he survives falling to his death or if Hawk is lying to make himself look better. It never comes up again though so I guess it doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile, Trill nurses Sek’nos back to health and offers to help him get back to his friends. Trill, who is flying a ship of a presumably alien design, shares her name with a letter in the stupid Star Wars fake alphabet, Aurebesh, and has that same letter tattooed on her face. Sek’nos draws no connection between her and Xesh, who recently arrived in an alien ship, shares his name with a letter in the stupid Star Wars fake alphabet, and has that letter tattooed on his face. He’s too busy staring at the incongruous cleavage window in her otherwise modest outfit.

Xesh and Daegen Lok, with Shae as their hostage, flee to the planet Shikaakwa to meet with Hawk Ryo’s crime boss brother, Volnos “Ox” Ryo, who is also the father of Tasha Ryo, who has once again forgotten that she is supposed to be a main character. Volnos was the one who vouched for Lok with Queen Hadiya in order to get him close enough to kill her. Lok still plans to raise an army to make himself the leader of the Je’daii, even though his plan for raising that army already kind of fell through spectacularly. Actually maybe the Je’daii didn’t even arrest all those retired war criminals he was meeting with. The plan could still be on, I don’t know.

Trill, Sek’nos, Hawk, and Jane Krakowski arrive on Shikaakwa and rendezvous outside Ryo Fortress. They are attacked by another giant dianoga, because apparently those are super-common now, but Trill shoots it in the eye, killing it like a low-level boss in a Metroid game. They then make their way into the fortress, where Volnos decides he is going to kill Xesh and Lok and makes a veiled rape threat against Shae, who Lok has put into a mind-control trance. Before we can get to that, though, the invading Je’daii attack!

Lok collapses the ceiling with the Force and he and Xesh run off with Shae again. I wish this comic had a dramatis personae so her identity could be upgraded from simply “Love Interest” to the more prestigious “Damsel in Distress.” Xesh tells Sek’nos he’s glad he didn’t actually kill him on Krev Coeur, but Sek’nos can’t take a compliment and talks trash about Xesh being Lok’s minion, so Xesh blasts him unconscious with Force lightning. There are a lot of panels of Hawk and Lok screaming at one another and then Lok cuts off his friend’s foot. Somehow this, but none of the other crazy stuff he’s done since Shae was kidnapped, is enough to break Lok’s concentration and Shae is released from her trance. She picks up Hawk’s fallen Forcesaber and duels Lok.

“Lok removes Ryo’s leg.” (Caption courtesy of Wookieepedia.)

 Xesh goes to help his newfound friend but Shae argues that Lok is just using him to gain power and he has the power to choose not to be a slave. For some reason this prompts Lok, for the first time in the story, to claim that he is Xesh’s master at the most inopportune moment possible. Xesh turns on Lok and says he is done being a slave. Lok reaches into his mind to try to turn his greatest fear against him, but Xesh is such an emo douche that the darkness inside his brain overwhelms Lok, rendering him temporarily insensate. Xesh goes for the killing blow but Shae tells him there has been enough killing, and for some reason that’s enough to stop this clearly deranged maniac. Sek’nos comes up to them and Shae calls him “Big, Red Geejaw.” I don’t know what that means.

A week later, Daegen Lok has been returned to Bogan, but he warns the Je’daii that the Rakata are coming and can only be stopped by embracing the dark side. Hawk Ryo confesses to the Je’daii Masters that he shared Lok’s vision of the shadow army and the sword of flame in the Chasm seven years earlier, but adds that in the vision he also saw Xesh (I guess he’s their last hope or something). Trill joins the Je’daii in preparing for war, a stranger to Xesh because of his brainwashing. This volume ends with her sneaking off to report to Predor Skal’nas, who orders his Rakata to prepare their fleet for the invasion. TO BE CONTINUED PREMATURELY CONCLUDED BECAUSE THE SERIES GOT FUCKING CANCELED!

Meditations

There’s a lot to poke fun at here but mostly because there’s a ton of stuff packed into these five issues. Overall, this is a marked improvement from the previous volume. Most of the characters get more stuff to do (except poor Tasha), including a few like Hawk Ryo who had been one-note or uninteresting until now. Sadly there’s next to no Rakata action in this volume, but it’s made up for by the wacky antics of Daegen Lok, the best new character and probably the overall best character we’ve met so far. Unlike almost everyone else in this story, Lok is a vibrant, entertaining character with comprehensible goals that, while ridiculous, he takes tangible steps to realize. As the titular prisoner of Bogan, he drives pretty much all the action that takes place, and does so in an amusingly eccentric and flamboyant way, such as picking up a human skull off the ground and using it in an impromptu ventriloquist act for no reason.

Xesh is somewhat more interesting as a protagonist now that he’s gotten over his “just kill everyone” phase, but he still has the personality of cornstarch and is blander than a color episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Shae’s characterization doesn’t fare much better, and here the solution is so obvious it’s actually painful that no one on the creative team thought of it: Shae should have been Lanoree Brock.

Not only would this cut out an extraneous redhead from a comparatively small cast, but it would also be advantageous to the roles of both characters: the “hot girl who redeems the brooding antihero through the power of love” character would become more interesting than “not interesting at all,” and the “cool, kickass female lead who only gets to do stuff in one book and then never shows up again” character would get to show up again. It also would have generated some real cross-promotional synergy instead of the Dawn of the Jedi spinoff novel having nothing to do with the plot of the Dawn of the Jedi comics. Plus it would explain why Lanoree saw Xesh in a vision when the only other characters to do so eventually ended up meeting him. You have failed me for the last time, Dark Horse.

Plot-wise, Prisoner of Bogan is fairly straightforward (the Je’daii chase Daegan Lok while he tries to recruit an army to fight the Rakata), but there’s a lot of information packed in there, mostly because Prisoner takes after the previous volume in having a crap-ton of exposition. Last time they gave us the back story of the previous 10,000 years of Je’daii history, this time it was the history of the Despot War and A’nang’s Kindness. This setting and its accompanying lore is not uninteresting, but at times it can get a bit disconcerting to be bombarded with so much fictional history that is a) only tangentially related to the actual plot and b) more interesting than the current story being told. It’s like A Song of Ice and Fire that way.

Like Into the Void, this book also contains an excessive amount of planet-hopping. It’s like John Ostrander said, “Okay, I planned out this whole setting with these eleven completely unique and distinctive planets and I’m going to show off every last one of them, goddammit!” The Je’daii are doing Je’daii stuff on Tython, now let’s visit the Evil Moon of Bogan, now we have to get crystals from Krev Coeur, now we need something from the domed cities on Nox, but then we have to meet someone on Shikaakwa, and meanwhile that one chick what thought she was on fire is in a hospital on Kalimahr! I don’t blame the writer for this, because having a very limited time to not only establish this setting but also sell readers on it must have been a bitch, but it’s something that stuck out to me and made the story feel busier than it needed to be.

Pretty good overall though, which I’m sure will only make the aborted finale all the more disappointing.

3.5/5 Death Stars.

Force Storm

Dawn of the Jedi: Force Storm

Author: John Ostrander

Artist: Jan Duursema

Medium: Comic

Publication Date: February 15 – June 20, 2012

Timeline Placement: 25,793 BBY (with flashbacks to 36,453 BBY)

Series: Dawn of the Jedi

Okay, let’s start again, for real this time. How does this true beginning kick us off on our journey through the EU?

“Our story begins a long, long time ago, on planets far, far away . . . ten thousand years before our time.”

Oh it’s kind of just a lame ripoff of the opening text in the movies, except much dorkier. “Planets” has a more scientific connotation, if you’re waxing poetical just use “worlds.” Also I’m not sure how I feel about beginning a story already set 25,793 years before the movies by immediately flashing back to 36,453 years before the movies. And what is with these oddly specific dates? I remember when Yoda saying he was 900 meant that he was literally born exactly 900 years before the moment he said it. Stop trying for historical realism, Star Wars!

Through eleven pages of exposition, we learn that 10,000 years ago, several planets throughout the galaxy had these giant space pyramids (which mysteriously appeared a thousand years before that, but thankfully we’re spared any more stacking back story) called “Tho Yor.” After sitting there doing nothing for a long-ass time, one day they randomly sent out a telepathic summons to everyone on each planet who was sensitive to the Force and they all piled into the pyramids, which then blasted off into outer space.

Sure, let’s just climb aboard. What’s the worst that could happen?

[Continuity Note: Among the planets visited by the Tho Yor is Dathomir, which is already populated by witches despite earlier continuity pegging their origin at 600 BBY, more than a 35,000-year discrepancy. Furthermore, the witches are all human, but at this point in history humans should still be confined to Coruscant until the Rakata, an evil alien race from the Knights of the Old Republic video game who ruled the galaxy in ancient times, spread them across the stars as a slave species (according to Star Wars: The New Essential Chronology, anyway, although that actually contradicts the game it was referencing). But you can’t have an EU story without rancor monsters and rancors come from Dathomir and the Dathomir witches are one of the EU’s most popular inventions apparently so what are you going to do!

[The Tho Yor also recruit several Twi’leks, the tentacle-headed aliens from Return of the Jedi whose females became a nerd sex icon after one of them appeared as the dancing slave of a slug. But according to The Old Republic, BioWare’s Star Wars MMO, Twi’leks were a genetically engineered race created thousands of years later by the Rakatan Mother Machine. I don’t know what the point of that retcon was, but they did it, and Dawn of the Jedi got it wrong.

[I’m also pretty sure that having Wookiees this early is a continuity error as well, as earlier continuity had them evolve from banthas brought to the planet Kashyyyk by Neimoidian space traders, and the Neimoidians evolved from Duros, and the Duros shouldn’t even have spaceflight yet. Also I don’t think this is at all how evolution works.]

The monoliths from 2001 take all these wacky aliens to the planet Tython at the center of the galaxy and dump them there. Fortunately, the Tython system improbably boasts eleven planets capable of sustaining life, several of which have multiple moons capable of sustaining life, so these dudes have a lot of space to move around in. They spend the next few thousand years studying the Force and fighting dinosaurs. Eventually they figure out that they have to maintain a balance between the light and darkness within themselves or the planet will be out of balance and start killing them even more than it already does when they’re being eaten by giant birds. Anyone who breaks that balance and falls to the dark side is exiled to Tython’s dark moon of Bogan. The light moon, Ashla, is presumably for people who fall to the light side and just spend their time going around not being dicks to people.

Flash-forward to modern times and cut to everyone’s favorite insignificant planet that keeps showing up over and over and over again because people remember it from the first Star Wars movie: Tatooine. Only this Tatooine is awesome because instead of being the desert wasteland from the movies it’s a lush tropical paradise covered in oceans.

[Continuity Note: Finally, some good continuity: if you engage in a long dialogue tree with the Tusken Raiders in the first Knights of the Old Republic game, you can learn that Tatooine used to have thriving rainforests and seas before it was bombed to shit by the Rakata, resulting in the desolate hellhole we see in the films.]

When we find it, the planet is in the middle of being enslaved by the Rakata. The Rakata employ specially trained slaves called “Force Hounds” to seek out planets strong in the Force (which is apparently just every important planet from the movies and EU); Tatooine was found by a human named Xesh, who kind of looks like an emo Zach Braff.

Predor Skal’nas, a high-ranking Rakatan muckety-muck on their capital planet of Byss (another awesome continuity connection to something that won’t be important again until much later), has heard rumors of a Force-strong planet in the Deep Core, but his own Force Hound, Trill, is unable to locate it because of all the black holes and gravity anomalies at the center of the galaxy. Xesh has a reputation for being the best at what he does, however, and promises that he will find this planet and Predor Skal’nas will feast on its bones. Uh-oh, all those characters I don’t know or care about are in trouble! Their planet’s bones are about to be eaten! Let’s meet some of them now!

We get a trio of unimportant scenes to introduce the personalities of our three main Je’daii characters: Tasha Ryo, a female Twi’lek torn between family and duty who’s also the niece of that Hawk Ryo guy from “Eruption”; Sek’nos Rath, a happy-go-lucky male Sith [Continuity Note: At this point in history, the word “Sith” refers to an alien species rather than the cabal of evil Force-users seen in the prequels. Long story.] who never wears a shirt and makes all the ladies swoon despite his creepy face tentacles; and Shae Koda, one of those anachronistic Dathomir witches and the first of many hot red-haired, green-eyed ladies in the Star Wars EU (I’m not sure how that recessive combination became such a sex obsession in nerd culture, but it’s going to get pretty ridiculous by the time we’re through). Each of these three has a vision of Xesh and sets out to meet their destiny. Shae is accompanied by her pet rancor, Butch, whom she mutated by experimental alchemy to be able to fly, like any responsible pet-owner would do. So does the ASPCA exist in Star Wars, or . . . ?

Just three sexy twenty-somethings off on an adventure.

Meanwhile, we catch up with our old friend Hawk Ryo, who is just as bland and uninteresting as he was in “Eruption,” only now that he’s illustrated we can see he has a black little soul patch on his chin and now I kind of hate him. He senses the Rakata aboard Xesh’s ship as it enters the system and sends a warning to the Je’daii Temple Masters, then sets out to investigate. The Rakatan ship mysteriously crashes on Tython, however, and everyone aboard is killed, save of course for Xesh. Shae, Sek’nos, and Tasha brave the perils of wild Tython to arrive at the crash site where they are confronted by Xesh. He makes short work of their swords with his “Forcesaber,” which is a lightsaber that can only be activated when its user taps into the dark side and was invented by the author so he could have lightsabers in a time period where there aren’t supposed to be lightsabers.

They fight for a while and eventually Xesh flees deeper into the Tython wilderness, the imbalance in the Force caused by his darkness and the deaths of all the Rakata resulting in the titular Force storm and the three musketeers turning on one another as they’re forced to confront their inner demons or something. They get over it though. Meanwhile Xesh almost gets eaten by spiders but then he doesn’t. The Je’daii catch up with him again but then they’re all attacked by the sandworms from Dune. The Je’daii save Xesh’s life and he repays them by hightailing it out of there. He watches their battle from the top of a cliff and predicts that Shae will sacrifice the others to the monster in order to escape, but he is taken aback when she refuses to abandon her friends and is ready to sacrifice herself to save them. Enraptured by her heroism and cleavage, Xesh rushes back to save her and kills the sandworm by stabbing it in the eye. Hawk Ryo and some Je’daii Masters with dumb names finally show up, and the one who looks like Morpheus from The Matrix sacrifices himself to end the Force storm by getting struck by lightning. He doesn’t even die though so it’s not much of a sacrifice.

The dissipation of the storm weakens Xesh for some reason and Shae subdues him with his own Forcesaber, being the only Je’daii able to activate the weapon because of her female emotionality. Xesh surrenders and tells her that when they devour his body, he wants her to eat his heart. She’s like, “Um, we don’t really do that here,” which is maybe the mildest possible underreaction to that request.

After the Je’daii take Xesh back to their temple and heal his wounds, Tasha, who has done nothing for the whole story, decides to make herself useful and mind-meld with the stranger, who conveniently has amnesia and can’t remember how his ship crashed. She sees a panel of the Rakatan fleet surrounding the Star Forge from Knights of the Old Republic and that Xesh was brainwashed as a child to be evil. She and her friends beg the Je’daii Masters, and I feel like a fool every time I have to type that term, to let them try to help Xesh find balance in the Force, but the masters are like “lol eff that” and just ship him off to the evil moon prison. TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Meditations

I enjoyed this comic, but I’m not sure to what extent that’s due to the comic itself and to what extent to the continuity porn. I mean I am a KOTOR fan from way back; throw in some Rakata, some Selkath, the Star Forge, and a verdant Tatooine and it’ll do a lot to distract from how much I don’t really care about these characters or what’s going on. Hawk Ryo and his friends whose names I can’t even remember aren’t really interesting at all. The younger characters are a little better. I like how Tasha just seems really incompetent at being a Jedi, I mean Je’daii, but then at the beginning of the book she effortlessly defends her father from assassins, so I don’t know what to make of her. Sek’nos Rath isn’t that memorable in and of himself, but the decision for him to be a Sith and yet just a normal dude was kind of clever, we’ll see if it goes anywhere. Shae is just the Love Interest. I guess Xesh is supposed to be the main protagonist but he has no personality and I don’t care. So far my favorite character is Butch the flying rancor, hopefully the rest of the series will just be her eating people with visual callbacks to KOTOR in the background.

“Never open the box. Opening the box would be horribly bad.”

The prose is pretty basic, just like in the preceding short story by the same author. None of the heroes really have an interesting way of speaking or any particularly snappy or memorable lines. The Rakata are a lot more fun and I hope we get to see more of their weirdo cannibal society in future issues. The artwork is really good but there are a lot of panels where people are just upside down or sideways or flying through the air for some reason. It’s a little disorienting and I don’t get it. Also there is a TON of lightning splashed all over this book. Remember the first time you saw Return of the Jedi and were blown away when the Emperor just conjures lightning out of nowhere? Prepare to never be amazed by it again, because now everyone does it all the time, even the sandworms! The overuse of this power is actually a common problem throughout the EU, but we’re just starting off and already it’s everywhere. Maybe it’s just really fun to draw or something, I don’t know.

All in all I was entertained, and the ending left me ready to move on to the next story arc. Dawn of the Jedi doesn’t have an incredibly distinctive visual style, especially the way characters dress, but for the most part it does manage to avoid the aesthetic of the prequel films, which has overtaken almost every other era of Star Wars storytelling. The setting is interesting and has a lot of potential, even though I don’t buy the whole “balance” idea and it just harkens back to the worst aspects of Beast Machines/Mass Effect 3. For being ambitious and mostly competently told, if nothing else, I give this one a decent if unspectacular grade! What more could a Star Wars story ask for?

3/5 Death Stars.