Star Wars Legacy – Claws of the Dragon
After the first two volumes of Star Wars Legacy, I really wasn’t sure about whether I should continue with the book or not. As much as I like the creative team behind it and the general idea of moving the story forward naerly a hundred and thirty years, the first two volumes didn’t do a good job of really defining the setting well and ended up just feeling overly complicated. It didn’t help that the lead character of Cade Skywalker certainly wasn’t appealing or even that interesting as he deal with the fallout of the death of his father and being on the run all while denying his heritage. It’s understandable to some degree considering the way that the galaxy was turning again, to have all that history in your family, but Ostrander wasn’t able to make it a compelling story.
This volume puts Cade on the offense for once as he heads into the former Jedi Temple in order to rescue the Jedi that he essentially sold off to Darth Krayt. Pushing his crew to the side into a holding pattern, it keeps the focus on him more squarely and it actually works well since he’s trying to step up to the plate as best as he can using the connections he has. What really works for it though is the amount of time spent with the Sith members here, Krayt included, as we get some extensive history for him that covers a lot of ground and challenges he’s faced and almost makes him a sympathetic character. The Sith side has always had a lot of potential but few things I’ve read have really made them seem interesting or truly fleshed out in an engaging way. Krayt’s passage to becoming a Sith is definitely interesting and connected to prior events well which gives it some added resonance. The book does keep the politics working through it as well, but generally the story here manages to go big in the right way with the main cast and succeeded enough in getting me to order more volumes.
Grade: B
Green Lantern: Agent Orange Hardcover
After enjoying a couple of volumes of Green Lantern, this one marks the Prelude to Blackest Night portion of the series as it’s doing more to introduce the various Corps of the emotional spectrum that’s out there. The main focus for this one is obviously on that of the orange side, which involves avarice. With Hal as the center, he’s coping with a problem in that he has a Blue Ring on him that’s causing trouble and the Guardians have decided to end the special privileges that the Vega system has had for a billion years now, using him as an in to deal with the threat inside. That threat, which has been leaking out in their view, is that of Lafreeze, a thief from a very different age that stole something from the Guardians but managed to secure the orange ring of avarice all those years ago. It’s twisted him up to be sure and it’s really neat to see him here with how he’s held tightly onto the Orange Lantern for all this time and has been hording his power. While it’s impressive with Hal hitting 210% power with the dual rings, seeing Lafreeze hit over 7000 is hilarious and scary when you get down to it. His storyline dominates the book, but it’s rushed and packed in a way as well as it has a lot of action since he can generate his own Corps with the ring to serve him, something that turns into quite the neat trick.
The subplot of the book is one that I rather liked a lot and wanted to see expanded on more as it involves the Sar Sapphire Fatality, who has come to grips with her problems with John Stewart that goes back a ways. With her planet of Xanshi having fallen some time ago and his involvement in it significant, he’s been beating himself up over it for an age and she went after him about it for awhile too. But when she became a Star Sapphire and really understood what it meant, it changed her approach to him and she becomes a strange third party in the midst of the incident with Lafreeze as she practically yanks him out of things and does her best to get him to understand that she forgives him and loves him. It’s always good when someone who has had an issue for a long time can start to come to grips with it and accept it and using Fatality in this way is certainly an interesting and welcome approach.
Grade: B
Jack of Fables: The Big Book Of War
There’s just something fun about Jack, even when he’s more of a secondary character than anything else. And that sums up a lot of his role in this book, though he’s more of a catalyst than anything else. With the Bookburner having arrived at the Golden Boughs, the war is fully underway and it essentially dominates the majority of this book with a fun little epilogue at the end that potentially sets up where things are going to go next. The sides formed up nicely before and Jack has taken on the role of the six star general so he can organize everything in his casual way while staying safely behind the lines. There’s a whole lot of back and forth in the book as it goes on with the two sides each having their moments of victory, but it’s also full of a whole lot of revelations as well. Revise has some really neat moments as we get to understand more of what his job over the years has been about where he’s rewritten many old stories and we see some of them unleashed to the real world again to comical results.
The character material itself across the arc is a lot of fun, especially when you get to those like Gary who finally reaches his limit in dealing with all of this. With him being the Fallacy, going off the rails and getting angry at all the deaths going on and the violence has him putting even the Bookburner on notice, setting Gary up for assassination. The war does end in a way that you would expect coming from a series revolving around Jack so while there are amusing moments and some mild surprises, it is admittedly somewhat anticlimactic as well. The best of the book, and what made it all worthwhile, is when it starts to delve into Jack’s true past towards the end of the run and it reveals stuff that makes me want to hit up the Fables books again to see if they ever dealt with any of it there. And the fallout from that truth leads to other things involving the Page sister that had me laughing out loud like I haven’t in ages and looking for someone to share that tale with, a giggle in my voice the entire time. There’s some drag with this volume simply because of the pace of the story and the war, but it has so much good stuff that you can’t help but to love it.
Grade: B+
Compleat Next Men Volume 2
After the strong first collection which also included the 2112 release, I was enthused to get into the second collection as I had only read a handful of them in single form before. And with having read the recent revival issues before reading these, it was enlightening to see how it all comes together. With nearly 500 pages to the book, Next Men covers a whole lot of ground through several storylines. The Next Men themselves have a lot going on as they try to stay ahead of the law and others that are after them while discovering things about themselves as well. With Control trying to keep them in line, he has them on a mission to Russia as well which expands their view of what the governments have been up to all this time in regards to the superhuman progam they were spawned out of. It also takes an amusing turn when Danny gets caught up in dealing with a comic book company that sees them as an ideal way of gaining a lot of business and being ahead of the curve for years to come.
While there’s a lot to like with that storyline, it also is a bit problematic as they work an angle about comic book characters coming to life. I like that they used various characters that were creator owned at the time like Hellboy and Monkeyman & O’Brien, but it threw things off a bit with how it unfolded. It all makes sense when it gets down to the nuts and bolts and you can definitely appreciate it. While that story was uneven, the book really excels in a couple of other areas. One is through a backup storyline that intersects with the main one down the line about a man that ends up using the name Mark who claims to be the future and is here to stop the Next Men from killing the president. It gets involved and the flow is a little off sometimes since it is a backup, but it does connect well overall and adds a great flavor to things.
The real fun for me was watching the gestating and growing storyline with Hilltop and Sathanas. As the two have worked together for so many years now, watching it get into its twilight years is thoroughly engaging to read. With the plans that Sathanas has put into play there’s a lot of little nuance here since he has all the views from the future and knows where it will go. Seeing how he organizes things to his own advantage, and to his very obvious own creation, seeing the pieces come together is just exhilarating to watch. Of course, the book here can only go so far but it hits a great crescendo at the end that leaves you wanting more. And that it was incomplete for so many years until it restarted in 2011 was definitely a difficult haul but very worthwhile. Combining this with the first volume and what’s come since, I can easily call this a full A+ series, but this one has a few minor problems that drags it down a bit.
Grade: A
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