These stories continue to fill the gap between episodes II (Attack of the Clones) and III (Revenge of the Sith) – the last two Star Wars movies. As a result, we’re in the thick of the Clone Wars and see a little bit of Anakin and Obi-Wan action, alongside a few of the characters we met in the previous volume and a handful of new ones. Since we know that Anakin and Obi-Wan are going to survive more or less intact, it’s good to see a few of the incidental characters run into a bit more trouble. You get the sense that Ostrander is able to make more of this extra room to manoeuvre with his lesser known characters than Blackman is with George Lucas’s sacred Jedi.
As with the previous volume, these are traditional action stories, throwing their Jedis into the thick of battle or on tough special-forces type missions. The Confederacy (the baddies who will later become the Empire) throw up a plethora of nasty, memorable crooks to deal with, including dark Jedi, grim mercenaries and, of course, that massive robot army.
The art is ably handled, with Duursema providing the highlights, but Joe Wayne’s atmospheric colours are equally worthy of mention.
This doesn’t hold the fascination quite as much as the first volume did, perhaps because of the latter’s novelty factor. However, for hardcore fans of the films and perhaps even those who prefer the swashbuckling action to the mushy romanticism, there’s some exciting extra treats to be had within the pages of this Clone Wars book.
Other titles in the Clone Wars series:
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