Welcome back, EveryWookiee to a very exciting comic book review brought to you by TFAW! Today delivers the continuation of a new era in Star Wars comics, the publishing and release of Star Wars: The High Republic #2 by Cavan Scott and pencilled by Ario Anindito! The tension builds here, folks!
This issue is the first appearance of Jedi Knights Terec and Ceret, the first appearance of Jedi Knight Rwoh, and tied with IDW’s High Republic Adventures #1 for first Nihil in comics. If you want to keep track of High Republic first Appearances and Key Issues, check out our article where we track those over here!
There are two regular release covers, cover A Noto and the Witter incentive, that you can grab at your local comic shop tomorrow or off TFAW or eBay if you strike out locally:
Selling out of most covers, TFAW is now offering a second print.
We start our issue out with Keeve Trennis, now a Jedi Knight, her former master, Sskeer, and the psychically linked bond twin Jedi Knights, Terec and Ceret. They are responding to a distress signal and happen across a derelict space craft, seemingly the victim of a Nihil attack. The team split up and investigate the remainder of the noxious gas-filled fuselage.
Keeve and Ceret head to search the flight deck while Sskeer and Terec head to investigate the rest of the ship. There are a number of instances where Terec and Ceret finish each other’s sentences although distant from each other. This is a great little gag, but it is only the most surface representation of this narrative device. It will come into play later as Ceret detects Terec’s tauma and Terec detects Ceret’s pain. Viewing the events of this issue through the narrative lens of Keeve is also helpful for the reader. She’s still new to the practice of being a full fledged patrolling Jedi Knight. A such, necessary information is conveyed to her through clarifications by her elders rather than rote exposition to the reader. I like this! Additionally, Sskeer has something bubbling beneath the surface. We’ve seen jedi fall into their rage before and we’re experiencing it here again. How Cavan Scott deals with it is an incentive that will keep me coming back for more of this series.
There’s a short skirmish with an abandoned Nihil Raider on the craft and it’s discovered the deceased Hutt who was flying the ship was transporting an essential ingredient for the new miracle drug, bacta! The Jedi decide to track down its source and get some answers about what Hutts are doing trading in Republic space.
Whereas issue #1 was a veritable firehouse of new characters, new settings, new periods of time, and new information, this issue is where Scott finds some manageable pacing for the story. If we’re building a mystery, this issue was a solid episode in that storyline. It had everything we would want, action, intrigue, a little humor, and tension. Anindito’s art maintains a high level of quality as it did in the previous issue. Various aliens from Gamorreans, to Hutts, to Trandoshans, to humans were all executed with detail and skill. Anindito avoided taking the easy way out and bathing the whole issue in smoke, and provided natural looking plooms along with flames, sparks, and details from the bulkhead.
All-in-all Star Wars: The High Republic #2 is another strong step in the steady march of this new era of Star Wars mythos!
