So, What comics did you buy this week?

[anarky]

Haven't read any of Jedi Knights, but agree on the rest. Mace really pissed me off because, like Thrawn: Alliances, it got mysteriously cut in half after solicitation, and we got half the story. At least Thrawn was based on something. I feel like Mace wouldn't have been as terrible (still weak, but not terrible) if we got a complete story. And it doesn't help at all that it came out around the same time as the Mace novel Glass Abyss, which was quite good.

Tensu Run was new for this, pretty lame, and likely to never be seen again. He felt like a shitty "why is this rando such a big deal?" Dark Horse character.

BTW, they've been foreshadowing Keeve's fate since the first mention in Dooku: Jedi Lost, where young Dooku is looking at busts of the Lost Nineteen (heh heh, though, really, I think 21 quit during High Republic), and Yoda seems particularly sad about whatever happened to Master Trennis. I'm getting the impression we won't get an answer in High Republic unless they rush the fuck out of it since that initiative is almost done.

[Tom Foolery]

Hmmm….there’s a solicit for a Finale miniseries after the Fear of the Jedi mini wraps. Perhaps she’ll meet her end there. She really hasn’t made much of an impact as a character for me, so whatever happens, I doubt it’ll stick with me for long.
Thrawn:Alliances is in my next SW read pile. I didn’t know they cut those series short, but I don’t think the Mace Windu series would’ve benefited from MORE issues. It was dull from the beginning. And they made him look like a sixty year old nine year old. The art was just godawful.

[Tom Foolery]

Here’s some DC back reading.

Superboy:Man of Tomorrow 3, 4. Connor has left Earth where there’s way too many Super people, and headed out into the cosmos to get into hijinks with a bunch of space pirate revolutionaries called the Cosmeteers.

Superman:Red and Blue 3. An anthology issue I was missing. These are b+w stories accentuated with red and blue coloring. You can get a wide variety of shading done with red and blue, so the effect is less contrast-y than they were going for.

Superman, Son of Kal-El 3, 6, 8, 10, 14, 16-18 and 2021 Annual. While Superman was off in outer space fighting on Warworld, Jon stepped up and became Superman on Earth. He spent most of it deposing an evil dictator of a made up country that traffics in super-powered people, and met his new boyfriend. The final arc had Superman return and they were fighting the son of some LuthorCorps scientists who had died and he blamed the Supermen.
I had read other issues, and these were filling in some more holes in that run. I read it out of sequence, but mostly I enjoyed the series. Tom Taylor is one of the better writers working at DC and everything I read of his is good to great. His run on Nightwing was fantastic, and his current Detective run is up there.

Action Comics 1041, 1043. Superman and assorted allies are trapped on Warworld, fighting in gladitorial combat and starting a revolution to topple Mongul’s regime.

Action 1049. Orion and the New Gods have come to claim Clark’s new adopted son Osul who is the reincarnation of some ancient cosmic god. Superman says no. This issue is right before Lex used Manchester Black to re-erase Superman's secret identity from the world.

Action 1063. The final part of Jason Aaron’s Bizarro arc where the entire world is turned into crazy Bizarros and Superman’s only ally is the now sane Joker.

Action 1068. The second chapter of Gail Simone’s arc where an intergalactic casino turns Earth into an arena and Superman to fight thru challenges to save the planet while aliens gamble on the outcome. I read the last part first months ago, and the first part second several weeks after that.

Superman 4, 12, 18, Annual 2023. Sporadic issues from Josh Williamson’s current ongoing. 18 was an Absolute Power tie-in. Lex has turned LexCorp into SuperCorp and is assisting Superman in his neverending battle for Truth and Justice. I’ve also been reading this one out of order, but I’ve been enjoying what I read. Williamson is another writer on my thumbs up list. He’s been doing the GIJoe relaunch at Skybound which has been solid so far.

Task Force Z 5, 7, 12. These are also filling gaps in a previous series I’ve read out of order. Jason Todd and Two-Face are leading a bunch of undead supervillains as a secret ops team for Amanda Waller. Pretty underwhelming.

Teen Justice 6. Finished this mini series that I wasn’t that interested in when I read the first five issues. I glossed over this one as well. It’s the Teen Titans in the genderswapped multiverse universe. Meh.

Up next, jumping back into the ‘D’ box!

[Tom Foolery]

The ‘D’ box

Dazzler 1-4. After Krakoa, Dazzler is going on a world tour with 24 concerts. Strong Guy is her roadie, Domino is her head of security, Shark Girl is her drummer, Wind Dancer is her PR person, etc. After she’s attacked by a saboteur at the opening stop on the tour in LA, like 15 of the stops cancel. Then she gets attacked in Tokyo and the rest of the spots cancel, so she and Lila Cheney give an impromptu concert in Madripoor. At her final concert in NYC the saboteur is revealed to be a Madrox Clone from Krakoa whose advances she rebuffed. Nonsense series.

Dceased:War of the Undead Gods 1-8. The fourth series in this epic Elseworld saga. It’s reductive to call this DC Zombies because Tom Taylor is crafting such an excellent storyline here. Every issue has a jaw dropping cliffhanger in it. Loved the previous series and this one is no exception. If you ever find the TPBs of these, definitely check them out. The highlight of this batch of books.

DC vs Vampires:All out War 6. There were several DC vs Vampires minis, and I only have this one issue, so no clue what’s going on. Don’t know who is a vampire and who isn’t and if there are different factions of vampires.

Lazarus Planet. There were two bookend Alpha and Omega issues that spun out of a Batman vs Robin miniseries. Elder God Nehza unleashes a volcano on Lazarus island that spews green Lazarus resin all over the world in the form of rain that affects everyone’s super powers. In between the two bookend chapters, there were several oneshot anthologies that basically seeded upcoming storylines for every ongoing and every upcoming miniseries in the Dawn of DC branding. Dark Fate, Next Evolution, Legends Reborn, We Were Once Gods, and Assault on Krypton were the oneshots. There was also a four issue mini called Revenge of the Gods that crossed over with Wonder Woman and Shazam’s books. Queen Hera of Olympus and the Wizard Shazam team up to have all the pantheons of gods take over the Earth so people will worship them again, and WW and the heroes stand against them. I only have the first two issues.

Then there was a bunch of FCBD books like Knight Terrors, the Dawn of DC Primer, and the All In oneshots. DC likes to rebrand everything once a year to get sales bumps.

DC Pride through the years oneshot. A $10 anthology that reprints early LGBTQ stories like when Pied Piper came out to Flash back in the 90s, or a Batwoman from the early 2000s.

G’nort’s Swimsuit Edition oneshot. A couple new stories accompanied by pinups of swimsuit themed Variant covers from the past few years. And an Adam Hughes cover of Power Girl that is

DC’s How to lose a Guy Gardner in 10 Days. Another $10 anthology book with several romance themed stories that I’m assuming was released around Valentine’s Day in 2024.

DC’s Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun. Another $10 anthology book from Halloween 2023. With all anthologies, there are some good stories, but mostly forgettable ones.

DC x Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3. A current miniseries(issue 3 just came out this week) where Darkseid invades Sonic’s universe to steal the chaos crystals and Sonic and his pals team up with the Justice League to stop him. It’s exactly what you expect it to be, but it’s still been a fun read. Sonic teaming up with Flash, Knuckles and Superman, Shadow and Batman, etc.

Up next in the ‘D’ box is a bunch of Deadpool, but first it’s back to the Star Wars pile. I’m gonna read everything left that wasn’t the four main ongoing SW books and all the Event crossovers that went with them. I’m saving those for last.

[Tom Foolery]

Some more Star Wars reading. I got about halfway thru this particular read pile. After I catch up on this week’s current reads, I’ll finish the rest.

Han Solo & Chewbacca 1-10. Set a year of two before ANH, Han and Chewie are given a job by Jabba to recover an Urn of some value. Greedo goes with them. There’s lots of double crosses and backstabbing as a rival smuggling gang, an old dude claiming to be Han’s long lost father, and a Marshall tracking everybody for a heist they all pulled at the very beginning of the series are all after the prize. Han winds up ‘dead’, Chewie ends up in prison where he escapes with the help of Maz Kanata. And the Urn is secretly holding the code matrix for some free thinking droid that led an uprising centuries ago. It was a pretty fast paced series, but it felt kinda meh as it went on. And as I read other series, it becomes absurdly apparent that Lucasfilm and Disney are trying to cram Batuu and BlackSpire outpost into every fucking thing.

Sana Starros 1-5. After Sana broke up with Aphra, she headed home to have an adventure with her grandmother, aunt, and her pregnant cousin who is married to an Imperial Officer. There’s also drama because Sana’s twin brother joined the Empire and now they hate each other. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful. Hondo Ohnaka shows up because…again Disney wants you to visit BlackSpire Outpost at DisneyWorld.

Star Wars:Life Day oneshot. Several connected short stories of Han and Chewie celebrating the Wookiee holiday at different points in their career. Gues where one of the stories takes place? Yup. BlackSpire Outpost.

Halcyon Legacy 1-5. An old man takes his grandchild on the luxury liner’s 275th Annual trip(which was, I think, the premise for the overpriced immersive hotel experience at the actual hotel), and when the ship gets attacked by space pirates, logistic droid D3-09 regales them with tales from other eras, from the High Republic, to the Clone Wars and the Rebellion, starring Aurra Sing, Zam Wessel, Padme and Anakin, Lando, Maz, and ohmyfuckinggod Hondo Ohnaka again…

Thrawn:Alliances 1-4. Darth Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn team up like two police detectives running down a case instead of the two highest ranking dudes in the entire Empire that would definitely have delegated this shit. And at the same time, we are getting a flashback sequence where General Anakin Skywalker meets the mysterious Thrawn after Padme goes missing at BLACK SPIRE OUTPOST ON BATUU and they form an alliance to figure out where she disappeared to. The two narratives whip back and forth for the entire series until…it just fucking stops. What the fucking ass? They didn’t even bother to wrap it up. I didn’t even dislike it, until the end. But what a ball dropping fuckall ending. Bullshit.

After I read this week’s books, the next series is Ewoks, who I’m assuming leave Endor and travel to Batuu.

[anarky]

Alliances was cut short at the same time the mediocre Mace Windu series was. No explanation whatsoever. It only adapts about half of the novel. Like I said about the Mace series, there's just no reason, since it's not like they stopped SW comics altogether.

And the novel came out about two years before Galaxy's Edge, so it came across as a pretty interesting Easter egg when the land was announced. Before this supposedly mostly deserted outpost became more popular than Coruscant.

BTW, the Han Solo & Chewbacca series leads into Dark Droids, which is the dumbest concept imaginable, but surprisingly is pretty good. Though it's confusing as fuck with all the tie-ins, and makes that unfilmed year after ESB probably the most eventful and important in galactic history.

[Tom Foolery]

Here’s last week’s books the day before this week’s books drop.

Absolute Wonder Woman 8. Diana does a ritual in the forest and blesses the trees amd they turn into a new HQ for her called the Hieron. She makes everyone some tea. Meanwhile, Veronica Cale and Dr. Poison(who is just a mass of poison gas stuck in a deepsea diving suit) have already weaponized the debilitating noise from the defeated Tetracide.

Avengers 26.
Batman 160. Htoosh continues. I don’t know what’s more annoying. The character assassination Loeb is inflicting on Jason by teaming him up with Hush because apparently the last 15 years worth of Jason Todd stories across at least 4 ongoings and however many story arcs in other mags have been completely ignored and he still has issues with Batman letting him die. (He doesn’t by the way. They’ve been resolved ad nauseum. Which Loeb and the editor of this book would know if they’d done one iota of research)
OR the idea that Loeb thinks Hush could get the drop on Damian, who is(apart from perhaps Cassie) the most adept martial artist in the Bat Family, even more so than his father. Which, again, would be readily apparent if Loeb had read literally ANY BAT-BOOK from the past twenty years since he wrote HOnensh. At least Jim Lee’s art is pretty solid.

Cable:Love and Chrome 5.
Eddie Brock:Carnage 4.
New Champions 5.
Daredevil:Cold Day in Hell 2.
Deadpool/Wolverine 5.

GIJoe 7. Pretty much a Beachhead solo story, as we are introduced to Flint and Lady Jaye’s Night Force; The off the books other secret Joe team. Beachhead is a badass.

Infinity Watch 5. The team uses Gwenpool’s schtick of using the panels and narrative captions to keep rewriting the story to defeat Zavala, and then the old cliche of ‘And then he woke up’ to give him amnesia. This mini was all over the place. There were some interesting ideas and a lot of hohum. I don’t much care for any of the characters, apart from Colleen Wing.

Justice League Unlimited 7. We Are Yesterday Part 5. Gorilla Grodd and his time displaced Injustice League are victorious! The Justice League have been spread throughout time with no way to get back to the present. Except the recently deceased traitor and d-list hero Airwave, is somehow not dead and is able to connect all the time displaced Leaguers in contact with each other because of his powers. He gathers a random team of heroes like Batman Beyond and hook hand 90s Aquaman to bring the fight to the present.

Marvel Free Previews 45. The Solicits for August. anarky will be excited to hear Artgerm is doing a variant cover of Uncanny X-Men 19 with Jubilee on the cover.

Magik 5. Illyana accepts that she and the Darkchylde are one and the same and defeats Liminal.

Spider-Boy 19. Bailey’s clever scheme to rob Mr. Negative’s secret bank to lure the supervillain out puts him at odds with Spider-Man, who demands Bailey quit the hero biz. Next issue is the final one.

Predator vs Spider-Man 2. The Predator is hunting New Yorkers. Both Spidey and Kraven are hunting the Predator. And now a bunch of other Predators arrive looking for the rogue troublemaker who isn’t supposed to be in NYC.

Star Wars:Rise of Skywalker 4.
Superman 26. Lois has lost her Superpowers. Clark demands Mercy shut down Supercorps after all the bs from the past few issues. Then Superman confronts Lex in prison about killing the superpowered Lex clone. Lex says he can maybe give Lois her powers back.

Ultimate Spider-Man 17. Green Goblin and Mysterio(aka Harry and Gwen) go blow up one of Mr Negative’s drug making dens. Then Harry has Ben call Peter and let him know that Harry’s still alive.

Venom:Original Sin oneshot. A floppy reprint of a digital first series. A time traveling Eddie goes back in time and possesses the symbiote while Peter was still wearing it to give the Eddie of that time the heads up on his future. But it kills Peter in the process. Eddie becomes a successful reporter who correctly uncovers the Sin Eater killer this time, and his life is great. Except everything else is worse because there’s no Spidey to stop all the other criminal shenanigans and world ending events. So the multiversal eventuality that is the Eddie Brock at the end of all things, sends the singular Eddie that isn’t part of the collective to un-fix the change. Not worth $7.

Void Rivals 19. Wreck-Gar, a Cobra-La assassin, and a bunch of Skuxxoid clones made this the best issue ever of VR because none of it was the regular VR nonsense.

What If…Donald Duck became Iron Man? Another Disney/Marvel mash up. This one veered away from the source material more than any of the other oneshots. Mostly because you can’t have Donald Duck getting kidnapped and tortured in Vietnam.

Wolverine and Kitty Pryde 2. Claremont continues his sequel to the original KP&W mini. Sometimes Claremont still belts out some bangers. Sometimes he doesn’t. This is the latter. Might drop it.

Uncanny X-Men 15. Dark Artery part 3. It turns out the secret morgue in the woods behind the X-Men’s new headquarters is a cork to a demonic dimension that houses the souls of all the shitty human beings that turned their mutant family members in. The demon overlord Shuvahrak wants Deathdream to be the new guardian of the Artery. But his teammates, the Outliers, aren’t letting him go without a fight. And neither are the X-Men.

Giant Size X-Men 1. For the 50th anniversary of the original GSXM, they are doing a series of oneshots. A Legion from thousands of years in the future, is traveling backwards thru time and mucking things up. Kamala Khan gets caught in the time blast and gets dropped into the original GSXM adventure. But since she’s a big fucking nerd, she knows exactly how to fix things, like being able to speak Krakoan to the Island, and letting the X-Men know the Island is in fact, a fellow mutant, etc. Also, Cyclops somehow remembers Kamala from when they were Champions together(I thought that Jean had erased all their memories of the future as a precaution, but I guess not.) Kamala gets shunted thru time again and arrives at the beginning of the Dark Phoenix saga, which is the next oneshot coming out.

Back to the Star Wars pile.

[Tom Foolery]

Characters who should also be getting Alex Ross timeless variants, but thus far have not.

1. Hawkeye
2. Vision
3. Frank Castle

Those three definitely because they’re in the fucking mural Marvel commissioned from Ross that’s in their HQ.

4. Quicksilver. If Wanda gets one, her brother should.
5. Luke Cage and
6. Iron Fist. Because the other 70s mainstays Shang-Chi and Ghost Rider got one(and also Frank)
7. Mar-Vell.
8. Ms Marvel/Captain Marvel. Because if Mar-Vell gets one, Carol definitely should. But also because She-Hulk and Spider-Woman got one.

After that, it gets more argumentative.

9. Deadpool? It’s arguable he’s the most recognizable Marvel character from the last 30 years that isn’t a “classic” character.
10. Nova? He’s been around since the 70s also.
Venom? Miles? Kamala? Any Guardians, either classic or modern?
I’d be more inclined to give some classic A-list villains the Timeless treatment before getting into the more obscure heroes. Magneto, Doom, Green Goblin, Red Skull, Kang, etc

Here’s the 4th wave of Ross Timeless covers. Except Luke Cage which comes out in a couple weeks.
8 of my 10 original suggestions have made it onto covers.
So NOW who deserves a cover that hasn’t had one?

1. Nova
2. Deathlok
3. Wonder Man. But should he be in his original goofy green uniform or his more “classic” but modern Red/Black suit with red sunglasses? That’s the more iconic look in my opinion. I’d have to look at a list of early Avengers to see who else would rate. Moondragon for example. EDIT. Here’s a shortlist; Hercules, Black Knight, Mantis, Hellcat, Starfox, Mockingbird. I don’t count Swordsman because he was a dirty traitor. And Two-Gun was more of an honorary member. Everybody else either already has a cover or joined well into the 80s and 90s.
4. Quasar.
5-7. Banshee, Sunfire, and Thunderbird are the only GSX-M team members who haven’t had covers. Havok, Polaris, and Prof. X haven’t had covers either.
8 and 9. Blade and Werewolf by Night are the only major 70s characters I can think of.
Also, only BlackBolt and Medusa got covers the first time around. That leaves the rest of the Inhumans. If the B-squad Defenders get covers, so should they.
One could make a case for the original Guardians; Vance Astro, Martinex, Yondu, Charlie-27, and Starhawknn
and
10. Deadpool. Yeah, I know. But love him or hate him, few characters have reached his popularity for Marvel in the last 50 years.
One could make an outside argument for Rhodey/War Machine. But that’s also getting into later years. Guys like Darkhawk and Sleepwalker have to wait their turn.

The third wave had 37 Villains. Pretty much every A-list baddie. If they did a second wave of bad guys, there’d be a lot of lower tier ones.

[Tom Foolery]

Just thought of some more characters that deserve Timeless covers.

Alpha Flight.

[Tom Foolery]

This week’s books.

Absolute Superman 8. While revisiting Smallville, Kal is confronted by Lois Lane from Lazarus and Jimmy Olsen from the Omega Men. Both are trying to recruit him. Then the Peacemakers show up and Peacemaker Smith shoots Kal with a kryptonite bullet. Lois and Jimmy are forced to work together to help a wounded Kal escape. Kal then chooses to go with Jimmy, and Lois gets arrested for disobeying orders. Also, the best intro of a villain; Omega Men assassins attack R’as Al Ghul. He knocks one of them into a lazarus vat and turns the guy into a baby. Then he casually throws the baby off the top floor of Lazarus HQ.

Absolute Green Lantern 3. While Jo and Hal continue to have an intense standoff, we keep getting more flashbacks to what happened under the green dome, including what happened to John Stewart.

Amazing Spidey 5.
Batgirl 8.
Birds of Prey 22.
Daredevil 22.

Red Hulk 5. OWUD tie in. I thought this was a tie-in mini, but it looks like the series continues after OWUD has ended, so I may have to move it to the ‘H’ box with the other Hulk titles. After Deathlok and Machine Man dropped a nuke on Ross, the radiation jump starts his Hulkiness and he lays waste to hundreds of Doombots. When they make a call for an extraction from the US Air Force, the Air Force shows up….and arrests them for violating the treaty the US has with Doom. Then they use an anti-matter cannon to depower Ross again.

Ghost Rider vs Galactus oneshot. Another JMS oneshot. Set in the 70s, Ben Grimm convinces Johnny Blaze to use his penance stare on Galactus. Ghost Rider straps himself to a rocket and heads into space to confront Galactus. But when he stares into Galactus’ eyes, he finds no remorse for his untold billions of deaths. Then Uata shows up and explains to GR that Galactus is an essential force of creation and gives GR a history of the multitude of universes that have preceded the current universe. When GR doesn’t give a shit and still intends to hold Galactus accountable, Uatu gives him amnesia and sends him back to Earth.

GIJoe:ARAH 317. Mindbender gets AI upgrades from Revanche. The Ninja team settles into their undercover assignment in Springfield. The recon team lands on Cobra Island.

Hellverine 7. Akihiro is collecting the assorted Hell Hulk body parts, and then gets double crossed by Severith, the mysterious new scientist working with Project Hellfire.

Imperial 1. Johnathan Hickman is revamping Marvel’s cosmic titles with this new miniseries. Someone is assassinating galactic heads of state with a poison mixture. Hiro-Kala, the(other) son of the Hulk, is one of the deceased leaders, so Hulk, Amadeus, and Jen Walters head into space looking for answers. The poisons point to the Kree and Skrulls, but a Kree scientist confesses that they were commissioned by the Wakanda Empire. Another attack leaves J’Son of Spartax dead, and his son Peter Quill is elevated to the throne.

Marvel Knight’s The World To Come 1. Chris Priest and Joe Quesada return to pen this sequel set in the future of their original MK Black Panther run. Inventively told in flashforwards and flashbacks. It’s cool seeing Priest and Quesada together again.

Spider-Gwen:Ghost Spider 14. It occurred to me while reading this issue about a Cosmic cube powered Gwen dimension hopping with Loki and a Loki Hulk variant that anybody who was mildly curious about Spider-Gwen after seeing her in the SpiderVerse movies wouldn’t know what the fuck was going on.

Star Wars:Jedi Knights 4. Qui-Gon and Shaak-Ti are chasing a bank robber who is being tracked by the Bounty Hunters Aurra Sing, Zam Wessel, and Bane Malar. Fairly decent issue.

Star Wars High Republic:Fear of the Jedi 5. The war with Nihil ends. Hurrah! This has been an underwhelming saga. There’s a Finale solicited at the end of the issue, but I don’t know if its another mini or a wrap up oneshot.

Storm 9. While interrogating Storm for assisting Xavier’s escape, their agents do duplicitous deals with demons from Limbo to attack Storm’s sanctuary, not knowing Maggot was throwing a Fight Club party and everybody from Juggernaut to She-Hulk happened to be there and made short work of the demon invasion.

Immortal Thor 24. After defeating Kemur, Thor and his allies attempt to escape the Impossible City. In order to save the others, Thor holds the line at the gate and faces an possible army. In the end, he is miraculously victorious against overwheming odds…and then gets stabbed in the back by Loki. And dies. Next issue is the final issue.

Ultimate Black Panther 16. T’Challa and Storm confront the living embodiment of Vibranium. Again. I feel like the past three or four issues have been the same issue. I’m bored with this series.

Ultimate Spider-Man:Incursion 1. Miles’ baby sister Billie finds a dimensional portal that The Maker left for Miles, and she gets sucked into the new Ultimate Universe. Miles chases after her and teams up with Peter and Ben to look for her.

Ultimate Wolverine 6. Logan gets deprogrammed by Legion and wakes up in a room full of his friends. It was three pages worth of story that they strung out for twenty pages.

All New Venom 7. Anti-Venom Flash Thompson confronts MJ/Venom about how to fake a battle to throw his bosses at SCAR a red herring. Meanwhile, Sleeper has been possessing Rick Jones without his knowledge and they break into SCAR headquarters, and come up against Doctor Octopus!

Laura Kinney:Wolverine 7. Laura wakes up from her ‘perfect life’ and finds herself on a spaceship being experimented on by Badoon. She and a bunch of other mutants escape.

X-Men 17. Magneto fights the giant alien goo child wearing a repurposed Sentinel. Cyclops shows why he’s such a badass by defeating the faux-X-Men.

Next up, still working my way thru a pile of Star Wars stuff.

[anarky]

Battle of Jakku TPB. It was pretty good. But, then again, I've read/played/watched most of what leads up to it. Current Lucasfilm is really getting worse about new stories that take place concurrently to existing stories leaning way too hard on those stories. Which is fine in some media (like video games, where you're still playing a game). But in a comic, you need a whole story. Shadows of the Empire nailed this. The main story was in the book, and the comic and game focused on side characters, but were done in such a way that they made sense without the book. Jakku is exactly what happens with High Republic, where the comics add to the novels but kinda suck as standalones. This book did an excellent job of finally ironing out most of the little discrepancies between the Aftermath Trilogy, Alphabet Squadron, Squadrons, Battlefront II, Destroyer Down, Lost Stars, etc, etc, etc. And I loved tying in the Spice Runners, Weasel, Dr. Aphra, and especially Jarek Fucking Yeager. But this had to be a fucking indecipherable mess for the vast majority of people who haven't consumed ALL of that media. "Who the fuck is Gallius Rax? Why should I care about him? Oh, that lady, I think his secretary, apparently just killed him off-panel."

It'd be like the neat little Rakata nods in Andor being crucial to the plot, but completely unexplained. In other words, The Rise of Skywalker.

TLDR, I personally enjoyed it, but, for a comic whose title indicates it's finally giving the answers in one handy place, it failed. Miserably.

[Tom Foolery]

Battle of Jakku TPB. It was pretty good. But, then again, I've read/played/watched most of what leads up to it. Current Lucasfilm is really getting worse about new stories that take place concurrently to existing stories leaning way too hard on those stories. Which is fine in some media (like video games, where you're still playing a game). But in a comic, you need a whole story. Shadows of the Empire nailed this. The main story was in the book, and the comic and game focused on side characters, but were done in such a way that they made sense without the book. Jakku is exactly what happens with High Republic, where the comics add to the novels but kinda suck as standalones. This book did an excellent job of finally ironing out most of the little discrepancies between the Aftermath Trilogy, Alphabet Squadron, Squadrons, Battlefront II, Destroyer Down, Lost Stars, etc, etc, etc. And I loved tying in the Spice Runners, Weasel, Dr. Aphra, and especially Jarek Fucking Yeager. But this had to be a fucking indecipherable mess for the vast majority of people who haven't consumed ALL of that media. "Who the fuck is Gallius Rax? Why should I care about him? Oh, that lady, I think his secretary, apparently just killed him off-panel."

It'd be like the neat little Rakata nods in Andor being crucial to the plot, but completely unexplained. In other words, The Rise of Skywalker.

TLDR, I personally enjoyed it, but, for a comic whose title indicates it's finally giving the answers in one handy place, it failed. Miserably.

Wow. Well, I look forward to being utterly disappointed in it.
Here’s the next batch of SW reads.

SW:The Acolyte: Kelnacca oneshot. As an elderly Jedi Master lays on her deathbed, she tells a story to her Padawan about the relationship between her and HER master, Kelnacca. Her original master died on the Starlight Citadel and Kelnacca took over as her master. When she dies at the end of the story, Kelnacca shows up and becomes the new Padawan’s master. This book was solicited before the backlash of the series, but by the time it came out, the D+ series had already been cancelled.

SW Episode I 25th Anniversary oneshot. A story focusing on Shmi and Anakin that’s told in between the events of the film. Had some decent moments that enhanced the movie, like Anakin returning from the space battle and finding out Qui-Gon had died.

SW Return of the Jedi 40th Anniversary oneshots. They did six issues, each focusing on different characters from the movie.
Jabba’s Palace was the best one. We find out what happened to the previous interpreter droid before Threepio. He got caught up in a plot to kill Jabba.
Ewoks was silent issue. It had three or four short stories without captions or dialogue. It was okay.
Lando was about Lando and Chewie trying to buy the blueprints for Jabba’s palace and having to play sabacc for them. It was okay.
Empire was about a civilian contractor who gets sent to Endor to work at the defense installation, and thru his own ineptitude at trying to make friends and fit in, he gets charged with being part of the Rebellion and sent to prison.
Rebellion was about a secret plot to kill Mon Mothma and Poe Dameron’s parents are sent to protect her from the assassin.
Max Rebo was about yet another plot to kill Jabba.

Ewoks 1-4. After RotJ, an Imperial Officer hires a bunch of bounty hunters, including Zuckuss and 4-LOM, to help him retrieve a cache of Imperial weapons from the forest moon. They force Wicket to act as their guide thru the forest, and end up fighting a gorax. As far as Ewok adventures go, I didn’t detest it.

Darth Vader:Black White & Red 1-4. Anthology series with three different stories in each issue. Apart from a couple of them, I wasn’t overly impressed with the series.

Darth Maul:Black White & Red 1-4. This one had a full story per issue, and each one was much better in my opinion.

SW:Hyperspace Stories 1-2. This short lived ongoing featured different characters in each issue. The first one was Anakin and Padme, the second issue featured Luke and Leia. Since it was from Dark Horse, my guy didn’t keep ordering it. But it went 12 issues.

Star Wars:Visions. There were a couple oneshots featuring the samurai sith lord guy from the Visions cartoon. I guess either it doesn’t translate well to comic form, or I just am not interested in this particular style.

Chris Sprouse did a series of variant covers across all the main SW ongoings for several months. They were a series of iconic moments from both ESB and RoTJ. Eventually, they collected each set of covers into a oneshot for the 40th Anniversary of each film. Pretty cool. I’m slightly annoyed there’s no ANH issue, but there probably will be.

I also started a oneshot called Revelations, but realized it was set amongst the ongoings I haven’t read yet, so I set it aside for later.
So, that is all the SW books except for the four ongoing titles, and whatever ‘Event’ tie in minis like War of the Bounty Hunterd, Hidden Empire, Dark Droids, etc. and the Battle for Jakku maxi, which I’ve been told is unwashed ass. I will start those on my next SW read, but first…

More DC back reading, and then after that a bunch of Deadpool from the ‘D’ box.

[Diabolical]

The Battle of Jakku was dogshit (or Bantha poodoo).

I think i described it like the Itchy & Scratchy episode where they introduce Poochie, and there's a bunch of nonsense going on, and Milhouse finally gets upset and cries "WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO GET TO THE FIREWORKS FACTORY?"
11 issues of nonsense before they get to the actual Battle of Jakku, which is several factions fighting, and not the Empire's great last stand against the Rebellion, and it's over in that one final issue.

And then, they're like, "oh BTW, a baby was born."

[anarky]

Because they don't retell anything that appeared anywhere else, but the title pretty much says they will. If they went with a different title (or just made it the first 12 issues of the new ongoing, which is their real plan, given the teaser at the end), explaining where the core characters were and what they were doing that kept them away from the actual battle, they wouldn't have that problem. It still would've been a partial story for the hardcore geeks who read everything, but at least they wouldn't have created the expectation.

[Diabolical]

It was still more of a skirmish than a battle.