Force Matters: Saving The Galaxy In ‘Star Wars: Jar Jar’ #1

It’s a celebration of Jar Jar Binks as Ahmed Best helps craft a team-up between the two Star Wars characters he’s portrayed on screen!

Star Wars: Jar Jar #1

By Ahmed Best, Marc Guggenheim, Kiernan McKeown & Laura Braga

Jar Jar Binks teams up with Jedi Kelleran Beq to bring justice to a people hurt by the emergency powers Jar Jar gave the Supreme Chancellor.

• This is the first appearance of the planet Urubai, where most of the action is set.
• Ric Olie is one of my favorite Prequel characters, largely because almost all his dialogue is him stating obvious facts — which happens here, as he tells Jar Jar the ship is coming out of hyperspace as it … comes out of hyperspace.
• Kelleran Beq is of course the Jedi portrayed on The Mandalorian by Ahmed Best, the co-writer of this issue and the actor who played Jar Jar in the Prequel Trilogy. He previously had a spotlight in Jedi Knights #8 (also written by Guggenheim).
• The “Sabered Hand” is a nickname Beq received due to his skills with a lightsaber, established in the online Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge game hosted by Best as Beq.
• Coralisa Senig is a new character, revealed by Best to be based on his friend, Coralisa Delaforce, who passed away from cancer.
• Coaxium is starship fuel, and was the central MacGuffin of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Cyphristal are, I believe, new to this issue.
• The idea of a “fractal radio network” (which uses cyphristals) however, isn’t; that’s the method of communication used by Luthen and Kleya on Andor.
• The specialist working on that radio network is Mira Bridger, mother of Star Wars Rebels lead Ezra Bridger (who hasn’t been born yet in this story). Given she and her husband will later be imprisoned for broadcasting anti-Imperial sentiment from their homeworld of Lothal, it’s entirely possible they were using the same cyphristal-powered network, and it makes sense for her to pop in here as an early expert on the matter.
• Aurra Sing is a well-established Prequel Era bounty hunter. Rum Sleg is less well-known, appearing as a background character in Star Wars: Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace (he can be seen walking the streets of Mos Espa when Darth Maul’s probe droid is searching, and later watching the Podrace). Though he received an action figure in 2009, this is the first time he’s played a role in a story directly.

This is a tricky story to judge. On the one hand, it suffers from the problem a lot of Clone Wars era stories have, which is that every victory is ultimately a pyrrhic one (because in the end, Palpatine wins). So while I like the idea of a story that grapples with Jar Jar’s culpability in helping Palpatine walk the path towards dictatorship, there’s only so much he can do. Yet the presence of Mira Bridger and the idea of the fractal radio network creates a sense of ultimate victory by starting a chain of events that can be followed all the way to the Emperor’s defeat — Jar Jar and Beq save Mira and decide to start a network to keep an eye on Palpatine’s actions; from there we get eventually get Luthen and the Axis network, the Bridgers’ resistance (to say nothing of Ezra himself), the acquisition of the Death Star plans, and so on.

This also gets dangerously close to gilding the lily when it comes to “redeeming” Jar Jar. By following that chain of events this story seems to be putting in motion, you could argue that this comic is arguing that Jar Jar is responsible for the ultimate victory of the Rebel alliance — the rebels don’t survive if the Death Star isn’t destroyed, Luke needs Cassian and Jyn Erso to blow up the Death Star, Cassian needs Luthen, Luthen needs the communication technology created by Mira, who is saved here by Jar Jar and Beq. That’s all implied enough to not be too egregious a case of a writer puffing up a pet character, and I generally like these kinds of “for want of a nail” type exercises. But it gets real close to crossing that line.

Tales From Tony’s Toybox

Action figure reviewer extraordinaire Tony Thornley is now tackling the Star Wars Black series figures. Check out this review of the new Obi-Wan Kenobi figure here and Anakin Skywalker here.