At the risk of enraging my fellow elder millennials and generations younger, I don’t have the same love of the Star Wars prequels as others do. Despite Star Wars lore taking up a LOT of real estate in my mind (right behind Spider-Man and Batman, to be honest), the prequels are forever in a state of “unmet potential” for me, as they have so many great ideas that are unfortunately jettisoned too quickly. In a lot of ways, I have more nostalgia for the hype around the movies than the movies themselves. Thankfully for me, there’s a plethora of Star Wars content set around this era of the saga to allow me moments with the characters introduced in those movies. From the Clone Wars cartoons (both Filoni and Tartakovsky’s), to novels, to comics, Lucasfilm has made sure that you will know more about these characters than could be fit into three films. Now, Marvel Comics is finally getting into this realm with Jedi Knights, a series from Marc Guggenheim and artist Madibek Musabekov that gathers all of your Jedi pals from the prequel era and places them in fun and exciting one and done adventures.
Set at various points during the prequel era (but largely before Phantom Menace), Guardians of the Republic features team up stories of Jedi on different missions. Qui-Gon Jinn, Mace Windu, Yoda, and a host of other well-known Force users are the stars for the opening issue, where the Jedi navigate a centuries-long war between two planetary systems. Yoda and Jedi Knight Vetna Mooncrest (a top tier Star Wars name, gotta say) investigate a mysterious warlord creating bioweapons. Qui-Gon Jinn and Shaak Ti attempt to stop a heist of stolen credits that belong to Jabba the Hutt, which involves the arrival of a host of bounty hunters trying to find their target before the Jedi do. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan rescue Bail Organa from giant Kaiju-like monsters called….Kaijura (on the nose, but it’s a fun adventure)! And Yaddle and Seera Longa, another new creation, attempt to mediate between the Trade Federation and The Gillanter Corporation in a mission that appears to be a simple meeting that quickly turns into a rescue mission when Count Dooku is kidnapped by the Gillanter’s Wookiee pirates.
Marvel
The variety of the stories is what makes Jedi Knights so fun. Not unlike the Clone Wars cartoon, there’s a huge amount of ingenuity and love for the universe in Marc Guggenheim’s scripts. The stories range from horror to spy drama to straight up action, and that variety was a very welcome surprise when I started reading this collection. Other Star Wars comics in the Marvel 2.0 era have felt very much like parts of a story, whereas Jedi Knights is content with just having single issue stories that are very easy to pick up and read, which is something I personally wasn’t aware of from the marketing of the series when it first started up (had I known, I would have kept going beyond the first issue). Guggenheim’s dialogue and voice for each character is in line with the movies, and while he doesn’t get to really expand on much with the more famous Jedi like Yoda and Mace Windu, it’s still fun to see them kick some ass, as well as seeing more Qui-Gon Jinn, one of my favorite Jedi with unrealized potential.
That being said, there are some small elements of the story that carry over from issue to issue, and that’s easily the weakest part of the book. The first issue introduces a subplot with a mysterious assassin who is tracking Qui-Gon, and after Obi-Wan has a vision of this person murdering his master, we get a few scenes of this character in the shadows and not much else. While it’s a good idea to have some small plots to thread the stories together, it happens too sporadically for the mystery to really take hold. Instead of feeling like a breadcrumb trail, it’s more like finding something you lost a few days ago and going “oh yeah, I forgot all about this”. Additionally, the new characters created for the series, Jedi and otherwise, are pretty one-note and not really fleshed out as much as I would have liked. While it’s absolutely fantastic that this series is committed to telling single issue tales, a little more care with the connective narratives and characterizations would have really made the difference here.
Marvel
Artist Madibek Musabekov must be having just as much, if not more, fun than Guggenheim working on this series. From new creatures and locations to Star Wars favorites in new flavors and styles, Musabekov is putting a lot of really inventive and creative creatures on the page that are destined for future cosplayers at Star Wars Celebration. While there’s a pretty standard page layout throughout the volume, it was a fun to see Musabekov mix up the style of the book for the third issue, where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan rescue Bail Organa from the giant Kaijura. Done entirely in full page splashes, it really captures the scope of the mission and how small the Jedi are in the face of the creatures. While there are some moments where the human characters in the story have almost too-similar features, overall Musabekov’s style really helps to enhance some already fun material.
The current era of Star Wars Marvel titles are pretty strong, but Jedi Knights is definitely one that surprised me the most with how much I enjoyed it. While it doesn’t offer the same enrichment of the prequel trilogy that something like The Clone Wars cartoons does, this is still an extremely fun series that showcases the Jedi in a variety of missions and adventures. Sometimes all you want is to see some cool Jedi action, and Guardians of the Republic has that and more.
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