Star Wars fans it's been a long time since I last spoke about a Star Wars comic book in fact the last time I spoke about a Star Wars comic book was on August 25th 2018. So to say that it's been a while would be a huge understatement however as luck would have it a new comic book has just been released and it's the first book in the new High Republic line of books that Lucasfilm is producing and so here are my first impressions of the comic book which is called "Star Wars: The High Republic" and so enjoy the post everyone.
As far as I can tell just based of this first issue this new comic book series isn't going to have a plot whatsoever. Which is already a huge red flag for me personally since if your not going to bother telling or setting up a story then I have to wonder what the hell is the point in this book existing since even bad comic books at least have a story to tell but who knows I could be wrong and there could be story developing but you only get once chance to make a good first impression and well so far "Star Wars: The High Republic" isn't making a good first impression in my opinon.
Now unlike alot of the Star Wars comic books where they don't really give you a timeline of when these events are meant to take place the High Republic series is meant to take place at least 100 to 200 or maybe even 300 years before Star Wars: Episode 1The Phantom Menace. Honestly I kind of like that Disney Star Wars is willing to explore a previously unknown time in the Star Wars universe since it means that the characters that we meet in either the novels , children's books , adventure books or comic books won't be overshadowed by the more well known Star Wars characters.
With this new era in Star Wars history it also means that we get to see new planets as well as new types of creatures. Sadly tho the first and only planet that we see in this issue is a jungle planet which is something that we've already seen in both Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace and in Star Wars: Episode VI Return Of The Jedi and so there really much new that you can do with a jungle planet because we've already seen what you can do with a jungle planet twice but who knows maybe in future issues we'll get to see more diverse planets and not just the same tired types of planet that we've seen a hundred times already.
As for new creatures we get introduced to creatures called the Ximpi who from what I can tell seem to be either talking bees or talking wasps. I will make it known right now that i'm not that familiar with alot of the Star Wars canon and so there's a good chance that other Ximpi have appeared in other books , comic book , children's books , TV shows or video games but this is my first time seeing them and all I could think is they don't shut up because the two Ximpi that they introduce in the story Lenaki and Kanri just don't shut up at all and that makes them really annoying characters in my eyes.
Writing this book is Cavan Scott who from what I can gather by reading his Wikipedia page has written alot of Star Wars stuff before but mostly for the Star Wars Adventures line of books as well as the Star Wars: Choose Your Destiny line of books. As such this his first time writing more mature Star Wars book and well if i'm being honest the writing isn't that good with alot of the dialog being spent telling us how good or protagonist Keeve Trennis is instead of giving reasons to actually care about her but that's also an issue with the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy so you can easily tell that Kathleen Kennedy is being very hands on with this High Republic line of both books and comic books.
The artwork for this book is being done by Ario Anindito who as far as I can tell has mostly drawn Marvel comics but he did draw a what could be seen an offensive take on the origin of Jesus Christ with a book called Jesus Jumpkick which he drew for Notion Splosion Press. The art in my opinion isn't that bad but the issue is it's not that good either since there are alot of drawings that do look good but there are alot more drawings that look like they could have done with one or even two more passes just to get them better.
Now then let's talk about our main character for this issue shall to me Keeve Trannis who yes is our main character for this issue. Is rather bland rather understandably we don't get to find out much about her but at the same time we don't get to find out what her personality is either and so she comes across as a generic jedi someone who the audience can picture themselves being but that doesn't make Keeve Trannis an interesting or even good character it makes her a dull and boring character or at least that's what I think anyways.
I will say that a famous Star Wars character does appear in this opening issue but it's just one short scene. To me tho having that character appear in this issue is pointless since all it is is a cheap way to try and get the older fans on board with this High Republic line of books and comic books since the role that this character played in the book is so small that it could have been cut out and nothing important would have been lost but that's what I think anyways.
Now then this is an action comic book and that means that I have to talk about the action that's in this first issue. In my opinion the action wasn't that bad it was the kind of action that you expect to see in a Star Wars comic book which is both this issues biggest strength and one of it's weaknesses because yeah the action is really cool but at the same time it's full of stuff that we've seen already and that kind of makes the action feel a bit boring in my opinion.
Overall to say that I have very mixed feeling about this first issue would be a huge understatement since there is the potential there to be a good book. However due to the fact that Kathleen Kennedy seems to be heavily involved with this High Republic line of books and comic books I can't see either this book or the line of book and comic books being that good and since this is only my first impressions of the "Star Wars: The High Republic" comic book then I won't give this book a rating since like i said it could turn out to be great and it wouldn't be right to judge an entire series based on the first issue of the comic book.
All of the images that I used in this post I got from either the official Star Wars fandom wiki page or a "other methods" website. Now usually I wouldn't do this but i'm going to here i'm not going to recommend the best website to use for images from this issue just because the website I would honestly recommend is the "other methods" website ad I don't condone using those kinds of websites hell I only used it just because i'm in the UK and well you know how the world is and what's happening in the UK right now so I had no choice but to use the "other methods" website but trust me when I tell you the images from that "other methods" website are very high quality and very high definition but again the "other methods" website is not one that I condone using tho.