Star Wars #43 Review

The Ashes of Jedha story arc ends with this issue, which looked to deal with the aftermath of the events of Rogue One and connect it to the events of “A New Hope”.

One of the biggest points in the issue was an apparent “turn” of one of the main villains of the series, which could be an interesting move going forward with this series and certainly ended this arc on a good note.  The last scene involving the remaining members of Saw Gerrera “Dreamers” did feel a little force, almost like the writers had forgotten where the story started and needed to wrap it up.

This issue has a few different action scenes, one involving Luke Skywalker dealing with the main villain from this arc, Commander Kanchar, but he does it in a more smarter way, which was a nice touch, since this seems to be expanding his growth as a upcoming hero during this period of Star Wars.  But at the same time, it would have been better had they actually fought some more.  Han Solo also gets time to develop his character as he grows into the role of becoming a leader.

Once again the art style struggles, the photorealistic style sometimes look jarring and doesn’t look good against characters not in the movies.  This main line Star Wars series is suffering from this odd art style, the background and vehicles look fantastic, but the photo faces just don’t work.

Bringing this story to an end did feel a little underwhelming, since it sees the Rebellion grow in strength, but this story seemed to jump around way too much, without giving us readers any answers.  The people on Jedha were saved from destruction by Han Solo, (which did feature some great artwork with the whole base dropping into the lava), but the whole middle bit with Luke learning more about the “Force” and being a “Jedi” from some cool looking but weird people in the lava just got thrown to the side, they’d have been better off holding that for another story and had this series end in five issues.

OVERALL:

This issue does a great job in closing the Jedha arc and also setting up some future interesting relationships, but the big battle between Luke and Commander Kanchar, just felt a bit anticlimactic.

REVIEW SCORE: 6 out of 10

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