Cantwell, Christopher

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

4 out of 5

(1 book)

Star Wars: Obi-Wan - A Jedi's Purpose

(Art by Ario Anindito, Luke Ross, Alessandro Miracolo, Madibek Musabekov, Adriana Melo and Wayne Faucher)

0 BBY.  Shortly before 'A New Hope', Obi-Wan Kenobi finds himself housebound by a sandstorm on Tatooine and takes some time to reflect on his past.  We see him as a youngling, as the Padawan of Master Qui-Gon Jinn and as a General of the Clone Wars, before discovering what he has become in exile thanks to an encounter with an Imperial Stormtrooper.

I'll admit to being annoyed that Marvel keeps churning out anthology-style comics when what they should really be doing is giving us some properly-told miniseries (honestly, Dark Horse were so much better).  But, if I have to read a collection of vignette stories like this, I'm glad that they all focus on my favourite Star Wars character; Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The author has done a good job of picking timeframes for these stories too.  We've never really seen Obi-Wan as a youngling before, so that was some interesting new ground to cover, and I always enjoy seeing a story featuring Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's iconic Master/Padawan dynamic.  The two Clone Wars stories are cleverly conceived too, with the first showing the early days of the war when Obi-Wan is still struggling with the role of General and the second showing the latter days of the war when you can all but feel his weariness, with his bond with Anakin being almost all that's supporting him.  The conclusion of the framing story then brings things to an appropriate end when Obi-Wan is faced with a Stormtrooper of the Empire but remembers what his true purpose as a Jedi is.

Far better than I expected it would be, this book is an excellent exploration of some key periods in Obi-Wan's life and I was also impressed to see numerous EU ('Legends') references which showed that Cantwell is well-versed in the lore of Star Wars.

4 out of 5

Read more...

Star Wars (here)