Today saw the release of the first issue in Dark Horse Comics’ new miniseries Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures – Dispatches from the Occlusion Zone, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
There has been a lot going on in Lucasfilm Publishing’s ambitious multi-platform initiative Star Wars: The High Republic lately, and today we got the launch of another comic-book miniseries that ties in with Phase III of the larger narrative. The High Republic Adventures – Dispatches from the Occlusion Zone #1 begins with Jedi Master Elzar Mann working with a hefty alien technician to send more EX droids across the Stormwall and into the titular Occlusion Zone, where one of them is intercepted by the droid 5A-G3 on the planet Eriadu. 5A-G3 brings the EX droid to the young Jedi Knight named Qort, who uses it to record a message for Elzar. In the message, he tells the story of what’s been happening on Eriadu since the most recent issue of Dark Horse’s main Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures title.
It seems that since the Jedi’s supposed ally Sevran Tarkin gained control of her family, she has stopped communicating with pretty much anyone, refusing to indicate on whose side she and her clan might be on in the war between the Republic and the Nihil. So Qort, 5A-G3, Crash Ongwa, and Emelsine Tarkin (Sevran’s young cousin) have a meeting to determine how to deal with the situation, and they decide to briefly kidnap Sevran’s pet Veermok– basically a big space ape– named Balinta, and use it to track the Tarkin leader. After they successfully do just that, they discover that Sevran has been working in secret to repair the core reactor located underneath Bri-Phrang City, which uses the lava flow of an underground volcano to power the planet’s two biggest cities, and was damaged in the initial Nihil attack. I guess this makes sense as to why Sevran’s time has been so occupied, but I am still not in any way clear on why she couldn’t have just told the Jedi about the broken reactor in the first place.
So this debut issue ends with Qort wrapping up his tale just as Jedi Master Emerick Caphtor (see Marvel’s Star Wars: The High Republic – Trail of Shadows for much more of him) returns from a mission and reports that another EX droid landed near Eriadu City. And in a final splash page, we see that this second droid has been intercepted by a member of the Nihil– this is Driggit Parse from the middle-grade novel Star Wars: The High Republic – Escape from Valo. There are just a tremendous amount of characters and locations to keep track of in this interconnected initiative, which works well and is quite rewarding for someone like me who actually gets paid to read this stuff during work hours, but my only concern is that other Star Wars fans may be having more trouble keeping up. Still, as its own story, Dispatches from the Occlusion Zone is fine so far, and it makes me curious how the central High Republic Adventures title will complement these events as it continues through Phase III. I understand that each issue of this miniseries will utilize different writers and artists– this month it was Daniel José Older working with Paris Alleyne– which should keep things interesting. But it’s still far from the only High Republic content coming out of Dark Horse Comics right now, as my next couple of comic book reviews will demonstrate.
Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures – Dispatches from the Occlusion Zone #1 is available now wherever comic books are sold.