Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Star Wars Dark Times #10
Dark Horse Comics
Harrison, Ross & Wald
The finale of the arc prior to Vector has a nice dark ending. Go figure. However, this one has more of a Charles Bronson feel to it instead of the depressing without vengeance type ending. The issue dances back and forth from K’Kruhk rescuing the kids to Bomo getting his new buddies out of their current mess. It’s a very good issue.
First of all, the artwork in this issue looks great. I don’t know what happened here versus the previous issues but this one looks like it was handled with care on every single page. The visual transformation of Bomo from a scared weakling into a gun lover is fantastic. I was extremely pleased with the art.
We pick up this issue with Bomo taking charge of the situation. With Crys and Ratty’s help he devises a plan to get out the others. Bomo’s metamorphosis into a leader is both believable and decisive. He isn’t letting any of the others get sold into slavery or worse as happened with his family. At this point he literally has nothing to lose.
Then we check in with Piru and K’Kruhk trying to rescue the Jedi kids. I didn’t quite get the ins and outs of this plan. From the pirates perspective wouldn’t they just hold the kids out there for protection? Or just start killing them off to bargain their attackers away? I found these little plot points the only nagging part of this entire comic. It’s not that the rescue and counter-attack wasn’t believable I would have just guessed the pirates would have been a bit more ruthless, especially with all that has gone on in this comic.
Eventually everything goes wrong with both rescue attempts and both K’Kruhk and Bomo unleash their anger in their respective battles. For Bomo, it’s getting out all the anger he has inside from the murder of his family. He finally finds some sense of peace as he slaughters those around him. For K’Kruhk he follows into some of the other Jedi’s footsteps. He isn’t a Jedi anymore. He’s something more gray. He uses his anger to tap into the dark side, even if for a second. He can’t stay with Piru and the kids after what’s he done in front of them.
So does this count as a happy ending? Bomo does his rescue with some level of success and K’Kruhk does the same. I’m not sure you can count this as a good or bad. Both saved lives at the cost of something within themselves. It’s a really good story with no clear cut winners.
For this series it appears Vector takes over next issue so I don’t know when (if ever) we will pick things up with these characters. It appears we will see some Vader though, which will be most pleasing.
This was a very good arc making it two in a row. Hopefully this series will continue to ship in a timely fashion and continue to provide these types of stories. This is definitely the darker side of Star Wars.
4 out of 5 geek goggles.
 Star Wars Dark Times #10 |
