Pages

Monday 6 June 2016

Star Wars: Kanan, Volume 2: First Blood Review (Greg Weisman, Pepe Larraz)


If you were hoping this one would pick up right after the first book, think again and get your sick bag ready because this one’s an origin story set during... the prequel, Revenge of the Sith (vomits). 

While Kanan heals in a bacta tank in the present, we flash back to his training at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant - enter cameos from Yoda, Mace Windu and Obi-Wan. Some baddies are stirring up some shit at the Temple, Kanan (then called Caleb Dume) defends the place, becomes Master Billaba’s padawan, and then the two head to a planet called Mygeeto. That’s basically the unnecessary backstory to the first volume, whatever that’s worth - I didn’t find it that interesting.

If you’re a fan of the prequels then the big draw for you in this one is the fight between Billaba and General Grievous, that weird multi-armed lizard/robot thing from Revenge of the Sith. Here, he’s not defeated as many Jedi so he’s only got the two lightsabers to wield but he’s still a formidable opponent. To me Grievous remains a pertinent symbol of the excess and bad ideas of the prequels. 

The final issue brings us back to the present where Kanan is finally healed up and ready to go on a new adventure with his own pseudo-padawan, Ezra. The new villain looks cool and I’d have preferred less origin/prequel crap and more of him and Kanan in the present but there we go. 

I won’t say this is a bad comic but nothing that happens in it feels like it needed to be told. We got enough of Kanan’s origin in the first book to do without a book length repetition of it with a few pointless extra details thrown in. It’s competently written and drawn by Greg Weisman and Pepe Larraz and I wasn’t that bored reading it but I also wasn’t that gripped either. A decent read but ultimately unmemorable.

Star Wars: Kanan, Volume 2: First Blood

No comments:

Post a Comment