|
"I won't
start a 100 word essay on how important and classic the Timothy Zahn
books are, upon which this is based on. Although this is by far not
the birth of the Expanded Universe, now known as Legends, it is its
revival, it sparked tons of new life to a franchise, that lay
dormant for a while and it gave the hungry fans something
substantial. Now onto the comic adaptation.
The Story:
I judge not how awesome this story is (because it is very much), but
how well it was translated from the books, and that is a tough one.
The story is intact, but 6 issues per book were not enough to really
give justice to the them. So while you get the story arc, you will
not get the detail, the background info – and most important, you
will not get the narrative and inner dialogue (thoughts).
This in
turn leads to sections that seem under explained, characters that
are underused and shortcuts, which are too short. Even having read
the books and having very fond memories of them, reading this 20
years later managed to confuse me on times. Now I cannot imagine how
it would be for someone who never read the books, but I would advise
to start with the books, and then give this a try.
The
Art:
As is the rule with any series featuring changing artists,
once you get used to the first one, the next one fails to satisfy on
first sight, but in time one warms up to him/her. This is similar
here. I loved the stylized style from the first book, where the
characters did not look like the actors, but you could tell one
character from the other. The advantage of this style was a more
dynamic feel. The second book goes into focusing on resemblance to
the actors, and mostly it is done great, sometimes awkward, but this
looses the dynamic a bit.
All in all the art is very good, and I
have to say that most [of the] stuff I imagined [was] quite similar
with only slight variations. But the mood of the imaginary is spot
on with what happened in my head during reading.
Summary:
This
comes highly recommended for the book readers. It is a true
nostalgia trip to the 90s, and one's childhood, when Star Wars was
reignited with new life. This comes moderately recommended for
newcomers. If you are only interested in the basic story-line and
you want to simply know what happened in order to move to the later
literature, than this serves its purpose. But you would be advised
to first go more in depth with the superior books."
|