Comics A/V Star Wars Adventures & SWA: Forces of Destiny comics (IDW)

Some early pencils for the Ventress issue of Return to Vader's Castle:

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BADDEST ASSEST

See, this guy knows.

 

Some more Return to Vader's Castle covers:

Spoiler: covers

Spoiler: me geeking out about one of them

I know Spider-Maul is going to command the most attention but THAT B'OMARR MONK* omigosh! I am crazy about any and all sci-fi brain-in-a-jar/vat designs and that is one of my favorites. I'm also just interested in the practices of the B'omarr Order itself.

*Or at least one of their droid walkers -- for all I know the tale** could be about a non-monk who is forcibly isolated in one and the terror of having their senses cut off. A sort of thing which I would very much like to read in comic format.

**Well, okay, the tale is about -Jabba-, but maybe he punishes someone in this manner or interacts with a monk? Or maybe the cover has nothing to do with anything except making me smile?!)

 

Preview is up for #25, a Leia and Holdo story written by Delilah S. Dawson:

Spoiler: SWA #25 preview pages

 

YES! I'm totally excited for more Holdo and Leia! I really loved them together in Princess of Alderaan. I honestly didn't think the next time we'd see them together would be Leia giving Holdo some driving lessons, but honestly I'm down for anything. Seems fun.

 

read the annual, I liked seeing Jaxxon again but they really went Full Poochie To the X-treme always right this time with him. Maybe see Jaxxon mess up would make him a bit more endearing, you can really only get away with "Dahh! It's Jaxxon!" like once. the Leia kid story was actually pretty cute with good art (I think the CW flashbacks of Padme were probably taken from Clone Wars episodes) and nice to see them work in Spark and Hope into her kid brain.

Hah I knew those TIES looked familiar!

 

Star Wars Adventures Annual 2019
1) Hare-Brained Heist
This adventure seems to take place near to the end of the battle of Endor. Lando and Nien Nunb go to refuel the Falcon and they get wrapped up into a rescue mission that turns into a retrieval for an old artifact. Having Jaxxon involved takes the semi serious Star Wars vibe and makes it cartoony, slap-sticky, and just plain silly so while it tries to ride the fine line of fun and serious, it ends up feeling like Looney Tunes and not really my cup of tea.

2) So Much More
Breha Organa, Queen of Alderaan, tells a toddler Leia the story of Padme Amidala - from Queen to Senator. In the end, she tells Leia to "hold on to this image, this feeling." I liked this as it ties what Leia will say to Luke in ROTJ on Endor. Breha also mentions the word "spark" many times, which ties us to the sequel trilogy's "spark" ...of hope and ...of the rebellion.

At first I didn't like it as it really didn't give us new information, but then I thought that maybe Leia was using the Force to tap into her Breha's words to visualize the story, a story that Luke never got to hear and Leia got to make those connections and hold onto those "images and feelings".

 

Interesting tidbits about Coruscant.

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According to the author, there's also a PT Easter egg somewhere.

 

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I think it could be one of the speeders that was parked at level 4, which resembles the one that Anakin stole in AOTC

 

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I believe she's refering to the triumphant return of everyone's favorite drug-dealer, Elan Sleazebaggano!


Looks like he took Ob-Wan's advice to heart.

 

Spoiler: SWA #25 comments

Cute art and story. Some nice color palettes in there.

The carousel with GFFA creatures was just darling. :3 Imagine a ride like that at one of the theme parks. Tauntaun, fathier, varactyl, fluffy miniature bantha... Nightsister rancor...

The panel right after the carousel has an adult Balosar leading a child by the hand. Not sure if that's the special PT reference -- Elan Sleazebaggano went home, rethought his life, and became a respectable family man? EDIT: Whoops, beaten! I should reload the page before posting!

 

Star Wars Adventures #24
1) Kidnapped!
My gripes:
a) This story is 13-14 pages, and Poe isn't named until page 10. Sure, you can kind of put two and two together with BB-8 working with a guy that mostly looks like Poe, but really the only reason I knew it was Poe immediately was because I read "AOR - Poe Dameron" and learned there that he was part of Rapier Squadron in the New Republic and I recognized the blue X-wings.

b) Also, who named the squad - Rapier? Sure it's only six letters but it's three syllables. In the heat of a space battle, one syllable calls signs like red or gold make complete sense to me, but by the time you finish saying "Rapier 3, pull up", Rapier 3 is all ready gone on the 2nd syllable. If Poe is in trouble, I'm going to yell Poe quick over the mouthful "Rapier Leader".

c) Essentially Poe gets kidnapped and BB8 does all the work and calls for help. His squadron shows up and causes a distraction that lets Poe take the pirates prisoner. Simple and forgettable story on par with most of the Adventures thus far.

2) Win/Lose
Cool to see Maz involved in a story which looks like it takes place on Takodana. I was semi expecting the main character of the story being caught cheating, but the idea was just to make him look foolish. Nothing

 

Wasn't there supposed to be a Galaxy's Edge Adventures comic coming out? I haven't heard anything about it since the announcement, and all of the other GE tie-ins have been released. Any ideas on what happened to this?

 

The "Flight of the Falcon" B-stories were tie-ins, and there was a special issue set on Batuu to finish the arc.

 

More Return to Vader's Castle covers and release dates via Francesco Francavilla's Twitter:

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That's quite the monster mash-up of species on the cover with Tarkin.

 

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-adventures-26-exclusive-preview

Spoiler

 

Next page: the triumphant, long-awaited appearance of Sloth Anakin.

 

Not sure how I'm feeling on this one. I love Rey and Luke together, but that seemed awfully rushed to me. Its gonna be tough for them to develop stories of Rey's training with Luke and make it feel like it naturally fits in with what we already have. Hopefully the full story is really good.

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I like seeing a more arrogant side for Rey, makes her more interesting to me than her always being nice to everybody, now show her struggles with the darkside without the narrative siding with her and we're good. It's also no wonder the caretakers didn't like her if she behaved like that.

 

Star Wars Adventures #25
The story was fine I guess, but it didn't do anything for me. I didn't get anything out of Leia and Amilyn as characters or what kind of relationship they had. Amilyn seemed kind of annoying and sort of a bad friend. She asked Leia for help then took her on a potentially dangerous adventure where they could have both been killed. And it was all for the effort of seeing a lost museum? Maybe if there was something in the museum that tied to Leia or even Amilyn's past, that might have been cool, but there wasn't really a payoff. It felt like a hollow adventure to me. The best part was reading about the Easter Egg above, otherwise I would have totally missed it.

 

The only problem I have with Life Lessons is the fact that Rey and Luke's relationship is being explored by Cavin Scott in a wacky Adventures short and not a proper one-shot comic. Cavan Scott is fine for throwaway adventures, but this part in the story feels like it should had a lil more depth than "oh no Rey was too confident, now she has to fight a monster, that'll teach her".

 

Well, "Rey on Ahch-To" is the only place where people can use Luke in the ST era, interacting with other ST characters, so they're gonna milk that thala-siren for all it's worth.

 

I think this comic will be in the same vein as this deleted scene from TLJ:


Which is fine, imo.