Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Star Wars Legacy #20
Dark Horse Comics
Ostrander, Francua & Anderson
A breather arc after the wild story we just saw conclude. Well, maybe its not a breather arc, but it’s a slow issue for sure. Basically, the Sith and their Empire are trying to track down the last of the old Galactic Alliance’s fleet. The issue has a lot of tactical planning and some new characters floating in. The one thing it has of interest to me was the involvement of Cade’s father courtesy of a flashback.
The issue beings with Darth Azard killing off an Admiral as a reward for continued failures. This is right out of the page of Darth Vader’s book, except Azard goes more old-school and kills him with a lightsaber. The new Admiral, Valan, is tasked with finding the fleet and its Admiral, Stazi.
Stazi is hanging out at Mon Calamari with the fleet, in hiding. One of the Alliance’s own, and a politician, Gial Gahar helps hatch a plan to steal the Empire’s newest addition to the fleet, the Imperious.
When the plan is discussed among the braintrust of Stazi, he is reminded of the fateful battle that saw the downfall of the Galactic Alliance. This flashback involves a lot of interesting characters, but the most important is Cade’s father, Kol. We really haven’t seen much of Kol and this involvement helps to see just what the Jedi were up against in terms of politics. This series could definitely use more Kol and what happened in his time.
This comic closes with Valan explaining how his plan will work, but the details are so vivid it almost seems that the explanation is serving as a real-time narrative as well. This confused me somewhat and left the cliffhanger to be a bit awkward. Did this part of the story really happen or is this what was expected to happen?
This issue is good, but not fantastic. The characters are mostly all new and so are the political angles. This makes the issue really tough to fully digest. Since there is the flashback in this issue as well it brings two different politically time periods to understand and this is a lot.
One character that pops up is an ex-stormtrooper from way back in issue #4. It was kind of random to see him caught up in this arc. Beyond that I don’t know if any of these characters have been introduced in this series.
The issue had little action, but it did have very complex plotting. This was an okay trade-off in my book. I could even have done without Azard hacking up his Admiral.
The artwork was good. It was the same level of darkness that we have come to expect in this series. This is one of the only issues in this series that focuses on the ships in this universe and it keeps with traditional Star Wars grand theatrics.
As a whole, this issue has some confusing politics, thick plotting and a strange ending. The truth is that since these characters are so new to the scene does it really matter who dies and which side wins? It’s hard to see why Stazi must succeed to help the overall good of the universe. It just feels like such a distant piece to the overall puzzle. Perhaps the next issue will tie this into the greater scheme more tightly.
3 out of 5 geek goggles.
 Star Wars: Legacy #20 |
