Welcome back, EveryWookiee! We’re continuing to track first appearances and key issues from the Star Wars High Republic comic book publishing initiative and today we’re taking a look at Star Wars: The High Republic #4, by Cavan Scott, Ario Anindito, and topped off with a beautiful cover by Phil Noto!
This issue contains a few first appearances and cameos that we’ll be adding to our master High Republic Key Issue List and WookyWiki.com!
You can still grab copies on TFAW if you still haven’t secured your new High Republic issues!
This issue starts off with Jedi Master Sskeer possessed by sentient dark side plants called the Drengir, and a deceased Hutt shipped back to Starlight Beacon for examination.
The Drengir, speaking through Sskeer, give our Jedi heroes the classic villain monologue about their history. The portion of this splash page depicting the Jedi releasing the Drengir bound by Sith statues is a retelling of Claudia Gray’s Into the Dark. Accordingly, it’s a good guess that the Jedi holding the green lightsaber is Reath Silas, and the other hooded Jedi is his master Jora Malli. Those two characters are the prime protagonists involved in Into the Dark. However, at this time, we don’t have firm confirmation or naming that those two figures are in fact them. The spherical space station depicted is also the Amaxine space station where much of Into the Dark takes place and this would be the first comic cameo of that space station.
Meanwhile, at Starlight Beacon, Estala Maru, together with Archivist Orbalin, Padawan Imri Cantaros, and his Master Vernestra Rwoh inspect the Hutt’s corpse. Orbalin is masked, and appears on two pages, five panels. Estala Maru’s first comic appearance is High Republic #1.
This is likely to be determined as Cantaros and Rwoh’s first full comics appearance. Rwoh previously appeared on one page of issue #2 identified simply as “Rwoh”, not Vernestra Rwoh. Both Rwoh and Cantaros appeared unnamed in issue #3 (TFAW Exclusive variant here).
Finally, we have an unnamed Hutt from the glorious Hutt Cartel! No doubt we’ll learn his(? her?) name soon.
We’re adding all these entries to our master High Republic Key Issue List and WookyWiki.com!
