Force Matters: ‘Shadows Of Maul’ #3 Is Heavy On Lawson, Light On Maul

Come along as we continue to explore the prequel tie-in comic book to an animated series that wrapped before the third issue of said comic came out!

Star Wars: Shadow of Maul #3

By Benjamin Percy, Madibek Musabekov, Luis Guerrero & Joe Caramagna.

Maul’s actions lead to unintended consequences for Lawson.

• Lawson spotting Fraxmoor sneaking up on him in the reflective goggles of a street vendor was pretty cool.
• Fraxmoor first appeared in issue #1; the other two members of the squad Lawson mentions are Hendrix (a mole working for Deemis, killed by a sniper) and Jam Jam, who died as a result of thermal detonator deployed by Hendrix.
• It is easy to hear Lawson’s dialogue when he returns home and finds Riley gone in Wagner Moura‘s voice.
• Ruhl previously appeared in issue #1 as the internal affairs officer looking into Lawson.
• There’s a weird sequence when Vaario has Lawson hanging upside down. Across five panels on one page, Vaario flips which side of Lawson he’s on in each panel, the idea presumably being that the “camera” is flipping from side of the room to the other between panels. Except the background — which is a bunch of crates and chains and the like — stays the exact same in each panel. So Musabekov clearly set the background, then copy/pasted it into each of the panels before drawing in the figures.
• The container Maul is holding Spinson Taryk in is the same kind of cylindrical round tube he uses to hold Vaario and Devin captive in the early episodes of Star Wars: Maul — Shadow Lord.

Even putting aside the fact that this issue was on sale after Shadow Lord completed its ten-episode run, this still feels like too much of a slow burn/decompressed story to serve as a proper prequel. Percy has a good handle on Lawson’s voice, and Maul finally did something, but it’s hard to muster up much energy about this.

Tales from the Toybox

Check out Tony Thornley’s review of the latest Darth Maul figure in the Star Wars Black line!