Force Matters — ‘Star Wars: Jedi Knights’ #6 Breaks New Ground

Welcome to Force Matters, a new regular column looking at each week’s Star Wars releases! It’s basically Previously on X-Men, but for comics set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

To kick it off, we’ll actually go back two weeks to the latest issue of Legacy of Vader, as well as dive into the new issue of Jedi Knights!

Star Wars: Jedi Knights #6 by Marc Guggenheim & Madibek Musabekov

Mace Windu, Aalya Secura and Qui-Gon Jinn investigate the mysterious death of a Jedi Master.

• This story takes place on the agricultural planet of Mina Rau, which was the “wheat planet” where the Ferrix refugees, including Cassian and Bix, were living in the first three episodes of Andor Season 2.
• This marks the first appearance of Aayla Secura in the series (she appeared on the cover of issue #1 and one of the variant covers to issue #5), and is her earliest chronological appearance to date.
• For whatever reason, Obi-Wan is not accompanying Qui-Gon in this story despite their master/apprentice relationship.
• Love the design on these hay-hauling robots. Also, this scene confirms that “needle in a haystack” exists as an idiom in the Star Wars galaxy, which makes sense.

• I also like the way Musabekov creates a sense of motion in this panel not only via Qui-Gon’s (luxurious) hair, but the way the little twigs and bits of debris fly up as a result of his feet snapping into an action stance.

• The seemingly-evil Corlis Rath pops up again after his appearance in issue #1.
• Qui-Gon’s “dying” word (quotes because we know he’s not really dying because The Phantom Menace) is “Sinsara.” No idea what that means, but the next issue tease on the final page helpfully tells us it’s at least a planet.
• While this series has had some overarching plot threads (notably the mystery of Corlis Rath and their vendetta against Qui-Gon), this is the first time the book has done a traditional multi-part story with this issue leading directly into the next.

The art, at least in terms of action layouts, continues to be stunning, and it’s nice to Guggenheim flexing the structural muscles of the book and changing up the done-in-one approach with a continuing story.

Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #7 by Charles Soule & Luke Ross

Kylo Ren learns the story of former Jedi Knight Grandea.

• In telling her tale of surviving Order 66, Grandea shows that she had a fascination with/proclivity for using the “Jedi mind trick”, saying it was often looked down upon within the order. This is broadly consistent with how it’s been approached in other stories, with many Jedi feeling it brushes too close to the dark side to enforce one’s will on someone else.
• Thus, like many other Order 66 survivors, Grandea survives in large part by becoming less like a Jedi, which is still a win of sorts for Palpatine.
• Grandea is able to use the mind trick on Hutts and Toydarians, two species shown in the films to be generally immune to it.
• It’s not clear if the Toydarian in her flashback is meant to be Watto, but he certainly has a hat similar to Watto’s in Attack of the Clones.

• In her flashback, Grande encounters two Inquisitors, the Ninth Sister and Thirteenth Sister. The Ninth Sister, who is a Dowutin, first appeared in Darth Vader (vol. 2) #6, and more recently in the Inquisitors’ miniseries. The Thirteen Sister first appeared in Darth Vader (vol. 2) #19, and was featured in the novel Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade.
• Kylo Ren learns that Luke Skywalker is dead from Grandea; she notes that it’s odd he didn’t feel his passing, especially given he was Luke’s student (and the fact that it happened moments after Kylo’s “duel” with him in The Last Jedi).
• In the end, Grandea appears to survive Kylo’s killing strike, then disappears entirely, along with the illusion that the town she’s in is a bustling place, revealing to be composed of snow-covered ruins. It’s not clear if the idea was she was using the mind trick on Kylo to incept everything that happened in this issue and the previous one, or something else, but either way, Kylo isn’t too happy his “hunt down a Jedi to prove himself” plan has gone awry.

I’m not sure dedicating the bulk of the issue to the backstory of a seemingly one-off character was entirely necessarily, but the end result is Kylo Ren is once again getting more or less punked, his plan, this time to look cool and badass by killing a Jedi, foiled again, and that never gets old. Also, the Luke Ross art is, once again, lovely – props as well to colorist Nolan Woodward, who gives all the Grandea flashbacks a purplish hue that matches her skin tone.

Cover of the Week

I like this Karen Darboe variant to Legacy of Vader #7, which invokes Luke’s “classic hero pose” from the original Star Wars poster by Tom Jung.