Yesterday saw the release of issue #2 in Marvel Comics’ miniseries Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku – Insurgency Rising, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
The Battle of Jakku – Insurgency Rising #2 begins with a shadowy conversation among the Acolytes of the Beyond (see the Star Wars: Aftermath book trilogy for more), wherein their further plans are set into motion. Then writer Alex Segura and artist Leonard Kirk cut to the Super Star Destroyer Ravager, where one of Emperor Palpatine’s Sentinel droids (from the Star Wars: Shattered Empire comic miniseries) initiates Operation: Cinder (which plays out in the Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron novels), and then Grand Admiral Rae Sloane (from Star Wars: A New Dawn and numerous other stories set during this period) appears in hologram form before an unnamed Imperial commander– using context clues I believe this to be Gallius Rax, whose code name is Operator. Rax dismisses Sloane’s concerns about Moff Adelhard, and insists that the problem “is already being handled.” Then in the Anoat Sector, we see Adelhard execute a Rebel Alliance soldier who dares confront him with the concept that the Empire has fallen. Adelhard then takes other soldiers prisoner and orders his lieutenant to interrogate them for information “about this so-called New Republic.”
On Chandrila, currently serving as provisional home of the New Republic, Princess Leia meets with Mon Mothma and Agent Calder Behrens (newly introduced here) to put together a team to assess the Moff Adelhard situation. The group Leia assembles consists of Kes Dameron (father of Poe, featured in recent Star Wars comics), Rynn Zenat (the B-wing pilot we met last issue), Jarek Yeager (who becomes a regular character in the Star Wars: Resistance animated series later on in the timeline), and Therisa Alern (another newbie). And on Endor, Luke Skywalker gives Rynn her new assignment and heads off to find “something calling to” him. Then we cut to Tatooine and the former palace of Jabba the Hutt, where a freshly bandaged Bib Fortuna has taken control of the now-deceased gangster’s territory. The Spice Runners of Kijimi show up (Segura has experience writing about this group from the young-adult novel Star Wars: Poe Dameron – Free Fall) and their leader Zeva Bliss (mother of Zorii from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) requests that Fortuna help them in aiding Adelhard’s forces, an offer Bib swiftly rejects. As they depart, Bliss tells her crew that it serves the Spice Runners to foment chaos in the galaxy, so she continues on with her plan, though one of Fortuna’s men is listening from the shadows.
The final two scenes are Luke Skywalker arriving on the planet Pillio (following up on a plotline from the Star Wars: Battlefront II video game) and getting attacked by the Acolytes, and then Kes Dameron’s team being ambushed by the Spice Runners. And I am left kind of aghast at how much work Alex Segura– along with the Lucasfilm Story Group members, who I am beyond certain have put in some overtime on this one– has done to tie all of these various dangling story threads and stray characters together from animation, live-action, publishing, and even gaming. It’s sort of incredibly assembled and absolutely rewarding for anyone who has been paying attention to the new Star Wars canon for the past decade. There are still moments where I find myself scratching my head trying to figure out the larger timeline for all of this– for example, does Leia’s meeting with Mon Mothma take place after her wedding to Han Solo in Star Wars: The Princess and the Scoundrel?– but I remain confident that those in charge know the whens and the whys, and ever hopeful that it will all make perfect sense when everything shakes out in the end. The two issues that have been released so far have made for an auspicious start to this 12-issue maxi-series, and (except for the eventual, titular Battle of Jakku itself), of courseI can’t begin to fathom where things are going from here… not to mention who else might show up along the way.
Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku – Insurgency Rising #2 is available now wherever comic books are sold.