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Star Wars: Purge
Review posted: 08 Jan 2006
Writer: John Ostrander
Artist: Doug Wheatley
Artist: Adam Hughes (cover)
Colors: Chris Chuckry
Publisher: Dark Horse
3.50 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by John League
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You know the drill. You watched the movie. It was great. You waited
for the sequel. It was great. But while it told you how you got from
the first movie to the sequel, it didn’t show you. Your answer might
have been to make it up, to write it down, to take your action figures
and act it out. But you never got to see it like you had on the big
screen. Star Wars: Purge fills in that gap for you — even though
you saw the sequel (Star Wars) before you saw its predecessor (Revenge
of the Sith), but what can you do?
Ostrander
and Wheatley bring a vivid account of one of the seminal transitions
from Republic to Empire.
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Darth Vader and the Emperor have the galaxy in an iron fist, but
Obi-Wan Kenobi has eluded Vader’s grasp. (Hey, moron! He’s on
Tatooine, the only planet to appear in FIVE of the six films.) Several
remaining Jedi use Vader’s desperate rage at Obi-Wan to lure him into
a trap.
But all is not serene and calm with the Jedi. Anger and fear
dominate their pre-showdown meeting. Some reach for the Dark Side of
the Force to combat the Sith. Others seek to withdraw from the world.
Others advise patience. It is this range of emotions — and the
actions that they precipitate — that make this more than just a
book about ass-kicking with lightsabers. The various Jedi range from
raging to resigned in their outlooks, lending a depth of emotion and
feeling to them that was conspicuously absent in their prequel
renditions. Here they are capable of anger, disappointment and even
betrayal.
Doug Wheatley pulls off one of the most difficult jobs in
comic-book art: making Darth Vader’s helmet look like it does in the
film. All too often the myriad facets of Vader’s skeletal mask are out
of proportion, distended to the point of hilarity. Wheatley does a
stellar job. The headshot at the end of the fight sequence is almost
worth the cost of the book alone.
The book is not without flaws (it’s hard to render the flowing,
acrobatic fight sequences that characterized the sequels in the
stop-action frames of a comic book, and we find here yet another
version of how Vader lost his right hand), but writer John Ostrander
and Wheatley bring a vivid account of one of the seminal transitions
from Republic to Empire. A rewarding read for the Star Wars junkie.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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