"Star Wars: The Screaming Citadel"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Star Wars: The Screaming Citadel” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            It was a time of turmoil for the galaxy. While the evil Galactic Empire remained strong, the forces of the Rebel Alliance continued to struggle for freedom from their oppressive grasp, establishing a secret outpost on Horox III, deep in the Outer Rim. Young rebel pilot Luke Skywalker, struggling to forge his destiny, was at a loss. He felt the Force, but without the proper training, he could not become the Jedi Knight he was certain he must become. Meanwhile, the rogue archaeologist and sometime scoundrel Doctor Aphra came into possession of a very valuable – and very dangerous- artifact… one containing the recorded consciousness of an ancient Force user.

            After getting into a fight in a bar, Luke found himself teaming up with Aphra and the Wookie bounty hunter Black Krrsantan. Aphra had come to deduce the Force potential in Luke from Aphra’s time under the employ of Sith Lord Darth Vader. Aphra informed Luke she had a crystal containing the archived personality of a Jedi named Rur, and that once a year, the Queen of Ktath’atn held a party where the Queen received guests and swapped favors for meeting interesting organic life, and that the Queen could activate the crystal, giving Luke a teacher, and Aphra information on the ancient past. Luke agreed to go along with Aphra, Krrsantan, and Aphra’s droids 0-0-0 and BT-8. Upon arriving at “The Screaming Citadel” of the Queen, Krrsantan was denied admittance to the party due to the Queen’s allergies to certain species. The Rebel alliance, led by Princess Leia Organa, with the aid of Sana Starros, became aware of Luke’s departure with Aphra and suspected that Aphra had kidnapped Luke. When Aphra presented Luke to the Queen, Aphra and Luke were rejected, until Luke used the Force to defend Aphra from the Queen’s guards. Aphra and Luke were informed the Queen would hear their request in the morning. The Queen secretly planned to consume Luke’s life force to sustain the Queen’s own life. Sana, having history with Aphra, deduced that Aphra had brought Luke to Ktath’atn, and Leia, Sana, smuggler Han Solo, and his Wookie companion Chewbacca headed to Ktath’atn in Han’s ship the Millenium Falcon. Krrsantan had been placed in quarantine since the party. At breakfast with the Queen, the Queen attempted to force Luke to use the Force to open the breakfast platters, but the platters were hiding Abersyn Symbiotes which the Queen intended to use to control Luke and Aphra. Luke and Aphra managed to escape the Queen’s dining hall and ran right into 0-0-0, BT-8, Leia, Han, and Sana. Sana attempted to take out Aphra, but Luke protected Aphra and revealed to the Rebels that Aphra had not kidnapped Luke, and that not only had Luke gone voluntarily with Aphra, Luke now considered Aphra a friend. The Queen’s agents chased the Rebels, Aphra and the Droids into a laboratory, which BT-8 sealed shut. The lab was full of Abersyn Symbiotes. Aphra led Luke off on the pretense that Aphra was trying to find a way out of the complex, but in actuality was leading Luke to the Queen. Aphra threatened to destroy Luke, and bargained Luke’s life for the Queen activating the crystal. The Queen used her abilities to corrupt Han. Leia, Sana, and the Droids managed to escape and found Krrsantan about to be taken out by one of the Queen’s lieutenants, Bombinax. After Leia, Sana and the droids managed to temporarily evade Bombinax, 0-0-0 surgically implanted an Abersyn Symbiote in Krrsantan’s head. The Symbiote enhanced Krrsantan was able to defeat Bombinax. The Queen unlocked the crystal for Aphra after Aphra delivered Luke to the Queen. The Queen infected Han with an Abersyn Symbiote and took control of Han, converting Han into the Queen’s army. Han attempted to convert Leia, but Sana and the Droids were able to rescue Leia from Han and the Queen’s army’s clutches. Luke escaped the Queen’s confinement. Aphra triggered an explosion to distract the Queen, and implanted Luke with an Abersyn Symbiote. Luke was able to take over control of the Symbiote hive from the Queen and became the new King of the Symbiotes. Luke began a duel with the Queen. Aphra used Rur to give Luke assistance and Luke was able to get free of the Symbiote and take down the Queen. Leia and Sana took out the remaining hive leaders, converting Han into the new King of the Symbiotes. Han’s act as King was to free all of the former Queen’s subjects from the control of the Symbiotes. Leia then had 0-0-0 sedate Han and remove Han’s symbiote. Luke rejected Aphra’s offer of access to Rur, and the Rebels and Aphra’s group parted ways.

            In an effort to find a new staging ground for a hidden rebel base, Han Solo led rebel leader Princess Leia to the planet of Odona, a remote world of Harsh extremes and secret alcoves long used by pirates and smugglers to avoid the Empire. But as their mission stretched on, Han and Leia found themselves cut off from their allies and lost in the caves of Odona as a massive ice storm approached.

            Some time beforehand, Han had double-crossed Frax. Frax teamed up with Selt and HR-PO to get revenge on Han. Frax, Selt and HR-PO followed Han to Odona. Han and Leia found themselves under fire and were separated. Han escaped into the caves, while Leia retreated to the Millenium Falcon. After getting weapons, Leia followed Han, Frax, Selt and HR-PO into the caves. After a shootout, Selt and HR-PO broke their deal with Frax, feeling they were tricked into a harder operation than they were led to believe it would be. Frax did not take this betrayal and ensured Selt and HR-PO did not walk away from the deal-break. Han and Leia escaped the caves, and Frax followed, and the three battled it out in the ice storm, and Han and Leia were rescued by the Rebellion.

            After escaping from a group of the Empire’s Tie Fighters, Luke and Leia landed on a planet made primarily of water. After spending week surviving, Luke and Leia met an aquatic race. Luke and Leia survived an assault from a squad of Stormtroopers and a Walker. Luke and Leia then used the parts from the Walker to fix their ship and escape from the planet.

            Sana teamed up with Lando Calrissian to run a moneymaking con on a group of pirates, the Empire, and Jabba the Hutt.

            The Rebellion tasked Han Solo and Chewbacca with smuggling Grakkus the Hutt across the galaxy past Imperial patrols to a prison facility.

            The Empire had abducted C-3PO and were interrogating the droid to try to get information on the Rebellion. Fellow droid R2-D2 stole an X-Wing to fly to C-3PO’s rescue.

            Sergeant Kreel and the Special Commando Advanced Recon Troopers were tasked by Darth Vader to find and destroy the Rebel base in the Horox System and bring Luke Skywalker to Darth Vader.

            As war raged on between the Galactic Empire and the Rebellion, the battle of everyday survival continued for those trying to live a normal life. Between the scorching heat of the twin suns on Tatooine and the vast deserts of the Jundland Wastes, the life of a Tusken Raider was not an easy one. But when the world had turned its back on the Tusken Raiders, they always had the sand to call their home.

            On Jedha, Luke and Leia rescued Ubin Des and Chulco Gi, two Partisans who fought with Saw Gerrera. After retreating to NaJedha, Luke learned Chulco was an Aspirant to the Disciples of the Whills, a group that worshipped the Force. Leia asked Ubin for a meeting with the Partisans’ leader. Queen Trios of Shu-Torun was working with the Empire to assist in mining Kyber crystals from Jedha. Trios was allied with Commander Kanchar in the operation. Ubin and Chulco brought Leia, Luke, and Han to the Partisans’ leader Benthic on Jedha. Benthic agreed to negotiate an alliance with the Rebellion. Chulco told Luke about the temple of the Cult of the Central Isotoper at the edge of the blast crater on Jedha. The Partisans planned to destroy the Empire’s mining Citadel on Jedha, and Luke, Han and Leia agreed to aid the Partisans in destroying it. After the Citadel was destroyed, Chulco decided he had to complete his pilgrimage. Luke decided to go with Chulco, against Leia’s wishes. Upon arriving, Luke felt a massive disturbance in the Force. The Imperials deployed their super weapon. Ubin attempted to destroy it but failed. Chewbacca was injured in a shootout in Nejedha space. Chulco was corrupted by the Dark Side of the Force, and attacked Luke, and Chulco did not survive. Luke reunited with the Partisans. Leia, Luke, C-3PO, and R2-D2 boarded the Imperial Destroyer Leviathan to disable the ship. Luke confronted Kanchan. Leia faced off with Trios. Han took command of the backup mission. The Rebellion and the Partisans worked together to end the Empire’s mining operation on Jedha.

            Okay, now we have the plot synopsis out of the way, so it’s time to move on to my individual segments of this review. As always, I’m going to start off by giving my personal opinions about the book. As far as the stories go, I found this book to be pretty entertaining. I will say that I love Doctor Aphra, so “The Screaming Citadel” crossover storyline with her was a real treat and turned out to be my favorite story in the book. I just like how she plays both sides of the field, and her relationship with Luke throughout the story was complex and I liked watching how it changed over the course of the adventure. I enjoyed the story of the Queen, and I liked how the Symbiotes were able to be controlled by the most powerful being in the hive, and the fluctuation of leadership was entertaining. I found all the one issue stories to be enjoyable, they gave fun brief looks at all the characters and offered some insight into their personalities, and it was especially enjoyable to get to see stories centered around characters like Sana Starros and Sergeant Kreel who have not had screen time in any current “Star Wars” film or show projects, so they don’t appear in any other media but the comics and there are no other places where you can view these characters, so those were actually the most interesting stories. I liked how the Empire was getting annoyed by C-3PO, they couldn’t get him to shut up about things they didn’t want to hear about and couldn’t get any of the information that they actually wanted out of him. I also enjoyed “The Ashes of Jedha” storyline, I thought it was exciting and had a lot of interesting moments, particularly the ending, which I am not going to spoil, but it did surprise me how Leia’s faceoff with Trios turned out. All that said, while I found the stories enjoyable, we cannot forget that this was a graphic novel and must be judged as such. And unfortunately, I did not enjoy the artwork at all. Some of my regular readers who have been with me before may recall my great hatred of the work of Salvador Larroca, and to my great displeasure, he was the artist on the issues of the main “Star Wars” series contained in this book. None of the other artists who illustrated for this collection appealed to me, either. Another component of a graphic novel I evaluate is the title. What I’m looking at is how best it was in representing the stories contained in this volume. There were only two ongoing storylines in this collection, “The Screaming Citadel” and “The Ashes of Jedha,” and I honestly feel like either one is good for the book, despite “The Ashes of Jedha” being one issue longer than “The Screaming Citadel,” but I won’t hold it against the editors for deciding on choosing “The Screaming Citadel” considering that it was a crossover between two different series and contained a one-shot, so I feel like it does deserve the priority title because it was an event and those are pretty big deals in Epic Collections. The final aspect I’m going to evaluate is the cover. This is to assess whether this cover represents the contents of the volume and if it actually delivers on what the cover shows, if what you see on the front of the book actually happens inside. This cover features Luke Skywalker with his Lightsaber in the foreground, with Doctor Aphra and the Queen in the midground, and the Millenium Falcon firing shots and red lightning in the background. I will say that all this does happen in this volume, so I won’t gripe about the cover being an inaccurate representation of this collection. I will also say that since “The Screaming Citadel” takes up a large portion of this volume and this cover primarily represents “The Screaming Citadel” that this cover is an appropriate choice as a cover for this particular volume. Was it the only cover that would work for this volume? Absolutely not, but it was an accurate depiction of events contained in this book, so I feel like it was a great choice as a cover.

            Next up on the agenda is accessibility. Now, I know there are some of you who are new to this blog and have never read one of my posts before and are wondering what I mean by accessibility, just as I know there are some of you who have been to this blog many times and already know what I’m about to say, having explained this over seven dozen times at this point, but for those formerly mentioned newbs to my blog, I must once again explain what I mean when I use the word “accessibility” in application to media. So, what I’m saying is basically how easy it is to get into this book. So, let’s pose the question of if this book is accessible? In other words, can a person who has no outside knowledge of “Star Wars” pick up this book, read it, and understand what they have just read based solely on what is contained in the pages of this volume, and this volume alone? I would say that this book is relatively standalone. While this book is marketed as Vol. 3, I don’t feel like the first two volumes are essential reads to understanding this book. I would say having seen the film “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” is essential viewing for understanding this book, though, and would not recommend reading this book if you know absolutely nothing about “Star Wars.” If you’re a fan of the “Star Wars” franchise and want to enjoy more “Star Wars” media, I wouldn’t say you should start with this volume as your first choice in comic reads, but I would not say it’s uninviting if you choose to skip the first two volumes and decide to start here. There are absolutely worse places you could start reading at.

            Okay, we’ve come to one of the most important parts of my reviews: the numeric score. I know that some of my readers come to my reviews specifically for this reason, but I know every segment of my reviews is important in some way, shape, or form, so I really can’t say this segment is the most essential part of my reviews, but it does have a high amount of value in the scope of the review. There are those of you who have been with me on some of my other seven dozen or so reviews, and already know how I roll, but I also know there are some of you newbs who need me to explain how I score. My system is extremely simple: I score on a scale of exact whole numbers ranging from one through ten. One is the lowest score I will give, and that means that reading this book was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. Ten is my highest score, and represents sheer perfection in every way, I can find no complaints about it, and reading it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. To get a ten, a graphic novel has to have an enjoyable story, amazing art, an accurate title, and an appropriate cover. I don’t very often give out tens. This book had an enjoyable story, but it wasn’t perfect. The artwork was consistently visually displeasing. The title and cover were both proper representations of the volume. So, putting all of those factors together and evaluating a score, what we’re looking at is… a six! While I enjoyed reading the words written, the visuals were just not appealing to look at and made the reading experience so much less enjoyable.

            Next up is my recommendation segment. This segment is meant to do two things. The first is to answer if I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend this book to you, my readers. The second is to suggest traits that a person looks for while they read that they can find in this particular volume, things that would make it appealing to readers. In answer to my first question, yes, I do personally recommend this book. If you’re reading this review and now, based solely on the words you’ve just been reading for the past few minutes you’ve decided you want to read this book, I would tell you to check your favorite online retailer or bookstore, or your local comic book shop or library, or “Star Wars” obsessed friend, and try to get your hands on a copy of this book as soon as you can and give it a read. As for the kind of people who might enjoy this book, besides the obvious of fans of “Star Wars” or the creative team, people who like books about aliens, robots, pirates, and smugglers will find this book enjoyable.

            Well, I’d say we’re getting close to the point where I’m about ready to post. I do have a few things I have to say first. I’ve been doing this blog for nearly six years at this point. In that time, I’ve published over 190 posts. Keep checking out timcubbin.blogspot.com for more content. I’ve compiled short stories, poems, essays, articles and editorials, and reviews. I’ve reviewed prose novels, comic book events, and manga, as well as over seven dozen other Epic Collections. I purchase every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection as soon as I can after it is released and if possible, post a review after I read it. Those are currently the main focus of this blog at the moment. If you liked this post and have some more time and want to check out more “Star Wars” content, I’d recommend reading my reviews of “Star Wars: Skywalker Strikes” “Star Wars: Yoda’s Secret War” “Star Wars: Darth Vader: Shadows and Secrets” “Star Wars: Darth Vader: Vader Down” and “Star Wars: Kanan: The Last Padawan” as more “Star Wars” Modern Era Epic Collection posts. I post on a very frequent basis My next review is going to be “Venom: Sting of the Scorpion” which should be posted within the next month after the posting of this review, so if you’re interested, keep checking back for it. That’s all I have to say for now, so until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!