Comics Star Wars #38-43: The Ashes of Jedha (6/6 Released)

The art in that preview looks amazing.

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

Good issue for issue #39. I don't know what some of you are going to say about the art but all I know is that I am really starting to enjoy these new characters. Gillen looks like he is starting to develop Ubin Des just like he did Aphra. Be interesting if she becomes a major player throughout or if she is just going to be a main character during this arc.

Also cool that they brought up an event that happened in the Rebel Rising book.

 

I think the issue is good but I HATE the photo-realistic art, which looks like it was cut-and-pasted from the movies. Also found the story jerky and out of nowhere at times.

 

Here's what does bother me about that art style: it's applied inconsistently within a single issue and even from one panel to the next. And it can look like a paste job, not fitting with the rest of the art on a given page.

Otherwise, I'd have no problem with "tracing." I don't mind, for example, the Aphra eating noodles panel. The picture does a good job telling the story.

But in context of the issue, Aphra doesn't always look that way. Which does, then, introduce story incongruity in an otherwise pretty decent story.

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

What about the disappearing forehead chevrons in this issue?

Spoiler

I loooooove the consistency that tracing allows.

And, to be completely fair...I actually found some of this issues art to be downright awesome:

Spoiler

The story is still intriguing, but I wasn’t as enthralled with this issue as I was the last one. For some reason, this seemed to be a bigger set up issue than the first one in the arc, and that seems backward to me. Narratively, more seemed to happen in 38.

Sent from my Ornithopter using The Force

 

Not enjoying this arc. I find the art distracting and I don’t see leia supporting a partisan approach. Luke seemed OOC to me as well.

Han also seems like a plot device


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Leia and the other Rebel leaders are trying to grow the Alliance. Attempting to gain a certain degree of understanding with the Partisans now that Saw is dead is something I could totally see them doing.

 

They didn't even changed Han clothes from the scene of ANH they traced


photo by this tweet https://twitter.com/bigredrobot/status/933464808770363392

 

There's also something of the Malcolm X factor in the discovery that a lot of what the Rebellion thought was ridiculous paranoia on Saw's part was just him being 100% accurate. Palpatine was actually planning to remove all veneer of democracy from the galaxy to rule as an absolute dictator. There was never an option to stop Palpatine with the Senate and a military solution was the only option. That the Empire can and would destroy whole planets of Core Worlds with no hesitation to keep the galaxy in line.

And so on.

The irony being the Partisans are probably either mostly dead by this time or even more extreme than Saw since they've gone through the wringer.

 

Star Wars Explained just made a video about this issue and all the conective tissues it had



If any of you have yet to check out his channel I highly reccomend it. He easily has the best Star Wars channel on Youtube for those that like paying attention to stuff outside of the movies.

 

You didn't know? Han doesn't change his clothes. Chewie's been going on at him for years that the Falcon stinks but Han don't care.

Couple of years later, he starts investing in a wardrobe and deodorant. Now, why could that be?

 

From the image on Twitter, it seems that the panel below, the back shot of Han, he has his ROTJ vest and shorter ROTJ hair. Han has a shapeshifting vest! And hair too

 

^This

I'll say it again; I LOVE Sal Larocca. I think he's a fantastic artist. I've followed him since he did Fantastic Four with Chris Claremont. His name on a book is enough to get me to buy it.

HOWEVER...this isn't even photo referencing anymore, this is just lifting images from a film still and putting a digital layering job over it. It makes the characters look extremely jarring as they stick out from the other art and some of the choices of image lifts don't fit with what's going on, and often they jar against other characters on the same page. It's often not even consistent from page to page.

I understand that some fans get extremely upset when artists veer too much from what they think Luke and the main characters should look like but this is too much, and it's actively damaging the story and people's enjoyment of the comic. Surely there's some middle ground that could be found? His SW work has never jarred this much before.

This also means he's being forced to compose his art around the photo lifts, which is hurting the flow of the story.

 

From the YouTube video, I like this panel. Simple, but clean art. Nice depiction of the Jedha camel or whatever its called running.

Larroca can definitely do it! More panels that look like this from Larroca please!

 

I just wish Larroca let the colourist colour the characters faces, so that the faces dont have a completely different style than the rest of the page. In the most recent issue, pretty much all the panels looked good to me except the ones with close-ups of human faces.

 

For once I will say something positive about this art, Benthic looks great. And there was one panel of Luke which looked ok (the bottom one below). If that was a style consistent across all the panels and pages, that would be fine... (maybe the colourist was allowed to do this face or it's just too small to notice?)


The inking on this art is unfortunate and adds to the other issues. Large portions of panels are solid black. But I guess that's the side effect when you don't want to draw characters or can't find a reference to copy and paste, you can just draw vague outlines and put them in total darkness. There's also this dotted pattern 'texture' that's used on practically everything, regardless of the surface, that just looks silly after a while. On Luke's cloak above, what are these areas supposed to be? It's everywhere!

I feel I should point out (I tried really hard not to post with more whining) that the main problem with Larroca's art isn't the tracing. It's the incoherent storytelling. I'm simply confused most of the time looking at these panels. Expressions hardly ever seem to match up with the dialogue, the panel of the Klingon suddenly 'screaming' orders at the subordinate in front of him for instance. I doubt that that was the intention of Gillen when writing this dialogue, it feels like Larroca drew it that way simply because he found an interesting reference to copy.

 

I created a thread for a discussion about the art within the comics we are getting. I think it is time we separate the two topics as if we try to combine them within one thread one tends to really take over the conversation. We weren't really able to talk about the story much last issue because of all the people just wanting to talk about the art and now the same thing is happening with this issue.

Anyways, I am really enjoying the story so far. Ubin Des has been developed very well for only being around for two issues thus far. I'm not sure she should know anymore about Rogue One than she already has mentioned though. All she should really know is the name Jyn Erso, Rogue One, and the purpose of their mission. Jyn wasn't at Yavin for very long and Ubin doesn't seem like she would have been in a position to find out much about her. If anyone else is going to tell Luke more about Jyn I think it should be Mon Mothma.

 

I am so in love with the way the canon is developing important people and bringing them back again and again instead of just adding lots of brand new people at every opportunity. The galaxy feels deeper this way.

This is all to say of course Queen Trios and the Shu Torun miners are in charge of extracting crystals from Jedha.

 

Yeah same, I had assumed a single reactor ignition was akin to a large nuke or something, but it looks more like it took out an entire continent.

 

Me too but this is even more impressive. Also I'm assuming it completely destabilized the planet and it's been falling apart in chunks for ... a year, maybe 2? Let's say 2 years. Strip mining the place for Kyber probably ain't helping either. Basically the single reactor shot was a fatal wound that has slowly been tearing it apart. It actually comes across as nastier than blowing the entire planet up in one shot. At least that's over quick.

 

That's a good explanation that would explain how there are still settlements there - the planet wasn't blown apart so much as it has been crumbling.

 

Jedha wasn't a moon?

 

The moon, then.

 

I'm asking it because the comics said Jedha is a planet but Rogue One said it's a moon

 

Somebody call Neil deGrasse Tyson -- he'll put that planetoid back in its place!