Last week saw the release of the fourth and final issue in Marvel Comics’ Star Wars: Mace Windu miniseries, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this climactic installment.
Mace Windu #4 begins immediately where the previous issue left off, with a great splash page of the titular Jedi Master character responding to the statement made in the final panel of the previous issue (I’m sure this will play wonderfully in the collected trade-paperback version of this miniseries). Mace says he has no idea what a “Dusk Weaver” or the “Had’le Path” are, simultaneously recapping the two new terms we learned in last month’s cliffhanger ending and issuing a defiant “I don’t care” statement from our favorite badass Jedi, as he and pirate Azita Cruuz are surrounded by two weapon-wielding cultists. These attackers spell out their demands, which basically involve the abandonment of all technology (I don’t think this is something I’ve seen in Star Wars before, which is cool) and naturally a fight breaks out, with one of the combatants using an electrostaff that can somehow block a lightsaber, to Mace Windu’s astonishment– I’m guessing it’s made out of beskar, but that isn’t confirmed here.
The battle rages on the landing pad of the refinery moon of Ro Mira and continues into (and around, above, and under) Azita’s parked ship, but their eventual defeat only culminates in the summoning of their big boss– the “Weaver of Dusk” himself, also known as the Shroud. This Devaronian baddie goes mano-a-mano with Mace across a number of pages as Cruuz makes an effort to utilize Windu’s Jedi starfighter to whatever advantage she can muster. There’s a lot of fun action here, though there were also a few moments in penciler Georges Jeanty’s art where I wasn’t sure what exactly was supposed to be happening. That minor criticism aside, I thought this was a fairly satisfying finale issue with a lot of memorable moments, such as Mace cutting off the landing gear of Azita’s ship to bring the whole thing down on his enemy underneath.
Writer Marc Bernardin has done a good job of filling Star Wars: Mace Windu with nifty bits like that, to the point where I think it might actually have too many ideas going on for a four-issue run. I think I would have appreciated these same concepts– especially the followers of the Had’le Path– allowed to breathe over more real estate, maybe through a six-issue storyline or longer. I mean, the final panel here does show the Shroud’s hand reaching up through the rubble and a question mark after the phrase “The End,” so maybe Bernardin and Marvel are setting us up for a second Mace Windu miniseries coming up in the near future? Either way, I enjoyed this, and wishing a story had been longer is always better than wishing it had been shorter. In the end, the Coaxium Ultra (it’s weird that I haven’t mentioned this narrative’s “MacGuffin” until now) winds up in the hands of the Jedi Order and likely swept under the rug forever, but will we see Mace Windu and Azita Cruuz interact again on the comics page? It probably depends how this one sold.
Star Wars: Mace Windu #4 is available now wherever comic books are sold.