Review: Star Wars Dark Times Fire Carrier #4

Star Wars Dark Times: Fire Carrier #4 (written by Randy Stradley and illustrated by Gabriel Guzman) is very obviously a Star Wars book. I’m not exactly a big Star Wars fan. I like the movies well enough (my thoughts on the series are probably something for another article), but I’ve always loved the promise that the universe had for stories outside of the original and prequel trilogies more than the actual movies. That is why I chose to review this comic–to see other stories they’re telling in that universe. And…it’s a decidedly mixed bag.

First, I’ll talk about the art. I’m not sure what to say about it; outside of a couple questionable looking facial expressions that were drawn for Sidirri, I don’t really have any problems with the it, but nothing jumps out at me as memorable. I don’t want to blame the few things that bothered me on the artist, since it’s possible that the design work was done by someone else. For example, the main character of the story, K’Kruhk, has a face that reminds me more of General Grievous, a cyborg, than something living, but since I don’t know who came up with that design, I can’t blame it on the artist.

Then we get to the writing. There’s nothing really wrong with the story in this comic. It doesn’t have plot holes or other story problems, but the writing itself is another story. The first is a problem that I associate more with Silver Age comics than modern ones: the overabundance of yellow text boxes. These are everywhere in the book as a narrator tells us the characters’ thoughts. These might be excusable or even work if they were presented as the characters themselves, but it’s frustrating and a little odd to be narration. And while not as bad as ones that spell out what’s being shown, they do explain what should be the subtext of the scene that we’re seeing – when a character is making what could be a life-altering decision, we can read it in their face and actions. The book should give us enough credit to let us figure out what is going on in their minds and tell us the story with the visuals instead of spelling it out in narration. Unfortunately, that same problem spills over into the dialogue, with characters spelling everything out, leaving nothing to subtext.

Another problem is the Jedi, which is something that has bugged me throughout not just this comic but the entirety of Star Wars: they’re boring. Proper Jedi are boring characters. They show no emotions, which is essential to relating to a character. Luckily, K’Kruhk manages to mostly avoid that pitfall, but Zao, another major Jedi character, runs into exactly that problem, and therefore I don’t care about him, and I really wouldn’t mind if he stayed out if the story completely.

So I don’t spend the entire review being negative, I should mention the things in the story that I like and think worked. Like I’ve mentioned before, I like the overall story. A Jedi trying to save the younglings (they should just be called children) in his care after Order 66 from Revenge of the Sith is interesting, especially with all the little turns the story has taken in their dealings with and attempted avoidance of the Empire. This issue ends on a rather large cliffhanger related to that storyline, but that’s expected, given that this is the second to last issue of a story arc.

The next thing I liked is the handling of the Empire itself. Though he’s not the central focus of the story like you might expect him to be, Darth Vader is a presence just outside of the main story (plus a major part of what I expect to be another continuing plotline that’s never really explained in this story arc), which serves well to remind you of just what is supposed to be going on in the background of this story. Related to that is one of the officers for the Empire, Lieutenant Gregg (who feels like a reference to Clark Gregg, who played Agent Coulson in the Marvel movies), who serves as a good source of comic relief. As a Lieutenant, he’s involved in a lot of the higher operations for the Empire, but isn’t important enough for anyone to take seriously, leading to multiple scenes of him trying to talk to Vader and just being completely ignored, a running gag from earlier in the series that somehow doesn’t get old to me.

Overall, it’s really a wash on this book. I probably wouldn’t recommend spending $2.99 on it, but, again, I’m not the hardcore Star Wars fan for whom this book was intended. There’s nothing exceptional about it that would have me recommend it to someone who isn’t already following the story, but it might be worth looking at when the entire arc is collected and available for a lower price.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is a lowly newbie writer here. Follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings to read his thoughts in bite-sized pieces when he actually has any worth sharing.