Today saw the release of the Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures – Crash Landing one-shot from Dark Horse Comics, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this issue.
The character of Alys “Crash” Ongwa was introduced in The High Republic Adventures 2021 Annual short story “Crash and the Crew Do What They Do” by Daniel José Older, though she and her security crew were most heavily featured in the 2022 young-adult novel Star Wars: The High Republic – Midnight Horizons by the same author. Now Older and Dark Horse have partnered to put out the first one-shot comic starring Crash and the rest of her gang, in which they hunt down members (and ex-members) of the Nihil responsible for the attack on Corellia in that book– think Steven Spielberg’s Munich, but in A Galaxy Far, Far Away. And so Crash Landing opens with one of these missions, but not before we see a mind-screen memory of Crash involving her history with a particular tree on Corellia.
Then, after successfully tracking down and sentencing to death an ex-Nihil named Krogger Sheem, Crash and her former Jedi Padawan “Agent of Chaos” (Older really loves branding characters as “chaotic”) Ruu pay a visit to Coronet City, where a slimy politician called Arch-Premier Buckell declares their services “no longer necessary.” So Crash’s team is put out to pasture, but they set out to complete one last Nihil-hunting mission anyway, turning toward the person most responsible for the Corellia plot: Krix Kamerat, who was once best friends with the non-Jedi Force-user Zeen Mrala (see Older’s Phase I The High Republic Adventures comic). Mrala, it turns out, basically considers Kamerat dead to her, so she gives her blessing for Crash and the other to do what they will to him, and Jedi Padawan Lula Talisola still has gaps in her memory when it comes to the period before the destruction of Starlight Beacon.
The back half of this issue deals with Crash and Ruu infiltrating a Republic prison in an effort to assassinate Krix, but after hearing him out on his delusions of grandeur, Crash decides that this particular ex-Nihil might be useful in gaining access to an even bigger, better target– namely Marchion Ro, the leader of the Nihil himself. This plan doesn’t go over well with the rest of Crash’s crew, but on the final page Older informs us that we’ll have to pick up his next The High Republic Adventures one-shot, entitled Crash and Burn, to find out how it goes. I enjoyed this story well enough to follow it through in further installments, and I’m especially appreciative to see stories set in The High Republic era that don’t revolve exclusively around the Jedi Order. As a writer, Older has his quirks that I’ve made note of numerous times before, but when seeing his name on the cover of a comic I do pretty much know what I’m getting myself into stylistically, so I’m okay with that. And his tendency to gravitate toward hyper-emotional, chummy personalities works better when those characters are non-Jedi anyway, as they are here. It’s interesting to see that Krix Kamerat’s arc– which I had assumed was all but over– is getting an intriguing second act, and I’ll be curious to see how that narrative evolves as Phase III continues to progress.
Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures – Crash Landing is available now wherever comic books are sold.