Sinking farther into my graphic novel addiction, I gave in this afternoon and spent my latest Border’s coupon on Dark Horse Comic’s Knights of the Old Republic: Commencement—passing over the newest installment of Fables.
Knights’ premise is what sold me. Set thousands of years before Star Wars: A New Hope the series chronicles the struggles of a young, falsely accused padawan. The graphic novel offered me the opportunity to delve farther into the Empire, the Republic. I was intrigued. At least for the first page.
The writing flounders—“Hang on a moment. My robe’s stuck.” What? “Hang on a moment”? The guy’s not putting his shoes on for a run to Mickey D’s. He’s a padawan surrounded by war, corruption, Sith, and other bad stuff. Flat and incongruous, the dialogue feels like one liners pulled from a bad Syfy movie. Climbing aboard a ship, a Jedi tells the foolish padawan, “Well, the war awaits. See you around, Zayne.” Uh, yeah. The exchanges stumble back and forth between awkward slang and misplaced formality.
Ching and Foreman’s artwork is beautiful; Atiyeh’s coloring is lush and vibrant. Their work combines to create an unimaginative knock-off of Lucas’s films. The same characters with the same robots occupy the same positions. Supposedly, the events are set millennia before A New Hope—not the weekend before. Has the galaxy’s technology been at a standstill for 4,000 years? How did the senator of this ancient world get a hold of Luke’s landspeeder?
Knights was a boring, tedious disappoint. I finished the thing, though. (I owed it to my coupon. I owed it to Fables.) The long list of titles in the back of Knights tempts me, calling to me with promises of past Sith machinations—not the least of which, I suspect, is pawning off poorly executed graphic novels to unsuspecting geeks.
3 comments:
So have you realized that not all graphic novels are worth reading?
Ah, but isn't that how all things are? Good books, good movies, even good candy.
Especially Star Wars graphic novels. Most of the stuff from the original Marvel run is OK to good (They were published in trade as Star Wars Classics a few years ago.). Dark Empire is good. And there are a few others. Visionaries (I think) was pretty good. Very rarely do I touch the rest.
But most of that stuff is pretty hard to read. Unless you're just into the extended universe to that extent.
I am enjoying Legacy: Broken. Nothing deep or insightful. A fun read.
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