Today saw the release of the debut issue of Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures Phase III from Dark Horse Comics, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment, which has been written by Daniel José Older and illustrated by Harvey Tolibao.
It’s been one year since the fall of Starlight Beacon, but only six months in the real world since Phase II of Star Wars: The High Republic came to an end (and that was set a couple hundred years earlier, if that makes sense). In The High Republic Adventures (2023) #1, the Force-sensitive though non-Jedi Mikkian orphan Zeen Mrala has become a lounge singer at the Republic outpost on the planet Eriadu, belting out songs about memories of those the Jedi have lost in recent years, while holograms of the dead occupy empty seats in the audience. But when her friends Farzala Tarabal, Torban “Buckets of Blood” Buck, and– gasp– Lula Talisola are added to the list of the dead, Zeen loses her cool on stage. It turns out that the system is designed to automatically declare the missing-in-action as dead one year after their disappearance, but Mrala simply isn’t prepared to accept that as truth. So she and her Jedi ally Qort take it upon themselves to comb through all the information and clues again, in the hope that they might somehow track down a still-living Lula.
A clamorous new droid named 5A-G3 pitches in by being overly honest about their chances of success, but he does help them stumble upon a transmission from a Nihil warlord claiming to “have what the Mikkian wants.” So Zeen, Quart, and 5A travel to the signal’s source on the moon of Bracront, where they find a sizable number of other Mikkians who interpreted the message as being for them. So these folks team up with the Jedi and Mrala to take on the Pau’an guards blocking the entrance to Tartak Vil’s fortress. But after Zeen fights her way in, she’s in for the surprise of her life, as revealed in this issue’s cliffhanger ending on the final few pages.
I go back and forth on Older’s Star Wars writing, but I thought this launch of The High Republic Adventures Phase III was really strong. The writer really seems to have settled on a confident voice, while retaining the unique style that makes these stories undeniably his. Meanwhile, Tolibao’s art is still quite busy, but the smaller panels work better than his big, often cluttered splash pages. And colorist Michael Atiyeh’s work goes a long way in helping everything read more clearly. And above all it’s just really neat to revisit these characters later on in the timeline, after the dust has settled on the cataclysmic conclusion of The High Republic’s first phase from a couple years ago. Plus that shocking reveal at the end here really opens up a whole lot more questions, so I’m already itching to pick up the next issue in January.
Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures #1 is available now wherever comic books are sold.