Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic #25 (Dark Horse – Miller / Hepburn / Pimentel / Atiyeh) – A yearlong event with repercussions for every era and every hero in the Star Wars galaxy begins here!
When a terrible vision reaching more than four thousand years into the future alerts the secret Jedi Covenant to the importance of Taris, they activate an operative already on this planet overrun by Mandalorians. There, in the deadly Undercity, she will encounter a monstrous threat, an ancient legend, and Zayne Carrick, the Padawan accused of killing his fellow students! For anyone who never knew where to start with Star Wars comics, “Vector” is the perfect introduction to the entire Star Wars line! For any serious Star Wars fan, “Vector” is the must-see event of 2008, with major happenings throughout the most important moments of the galaxy’s history!
When I played through the first KOTOR game, I didn’t find the planet of Taris all the interesting. And the “threat” of the Rakghouls not all the threatening. Then I started reading the KOTOR comics and I finally get the idea of how terrifying these things are. The Rakghoul virus actually changes a person’s DNA to an entirely different species. A feral and monstrous species. That being said, the “terrible vision” is of an organized and deadly Rakghoul army which seem to be controlled by a dark Jedi wearing something called the Muur Talisman, a powerful artifact thousands of years old. The vision also included Zayne Carrick, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and Cade Skywalker. The stars of every Star Wars comics currently on the stands, but the kicker is their settings are thousands of years apart. So now the race is on for the Covenant to find the Muur Talisman, but you just know the Zayne Carrick is going to screw that up some how.
This is truly the beginning of a bigger story. Miller does an excellent job of writing a KOTOR issue, without having the ongoing KOTOR story get in the way. It’s perfect for bringing in new readers and still keeps the originality and comedy that I’ve grown to love from Miller’s writing. The art did take me out of the story a few times when I would look at a panel and think, “that angel looks kinda weird.”, but overall I enjoyed it.
Now to a point that John Jackson Miller brought up at a recent book signing I was at: There is no such thing as time-travel in the Star Wars universe. So how is it that all these characters will come together? I think it’s going to be like the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. There is going to be some kind of powerful event, I’m guessing centralized on the Muur Talisman, that will tie all the time streams together. No one will be able to time-travel, but they will be able to communicate with each other across time. Which should make the conversations between Vader, Luke, and Cade pretty interesting.
Grade: A
