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Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic #27 (VECTOR: PART 3) ( Dark Horse / Miller / Hepburn / Parsons)

An ancient evil gains long-coveted power in the third part of 2008’s biggest Star WarsSomething terrible is spreading among the Mandalorians, threatening to bring their conquest of the galaxy to a previously unthinkable new level! Unfortunately, fugitive Padawan Zayne Carrick and the con artist Gryph don’t even know how they’re going to survive their current predicament, let alone stop this horrifying threat! Lucky for the galaxy, their companion Jedi Celeste Morne has a few ideas about what to do. Unlucky for Zayne, Celeste’s boss wants him dead! * This is only the third issue of “Vector,” a 12-part storyline that will run through every event! Star Wars title, from Knights of the Old Republic, to Dark Times, to Rebellion, to Legacy.

So here’s one where the story is worth while and really very good, but the art was so much better when it was done by Brian Ching or Travel Foreman. Scott Hepburn is a good artist, I just don’t think his cartoony style fits KOTOR very well. His Rakghouls look cool, but Zayne Carrick looks like the lovechild of Adrian Brody and Crispin Glover.

John Jackson Miller does an excellent job with this third installment of the Vector crossover as we see that the Muur Talisman may have a mind of it’s own. Since there is no time travel in the Star Wars universe, I’m becoming more and more intrigued on how Miller and company will explain how these time periods in the Star Wars universe will connect.

Issue Grade: B+

Series Grade: A-

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #26 (Vector Part 2) (Dark Horse / Miller / Hepburn / Pimentel / Parsons)

” The second part of the biggest Star Wars story of 2008 begins with Mandalorians galore and ends with the arrival of a seemingly unstoppable threat!  Fugitive Padawan Zayne Carrick and his con-artist companion Gryph have fallen into a situation even more dangerous than the one they escaped on wartorn Taris-surrounded by enemies and trapped in close-quarters with a deadly agent of the group who framed Zayne for killing his fellow Jedi-in-training!

* No one should miss “Vector”! This is Star Wars on its grandest scale-a galaxy-spanning, era-defining, sure-fire hit with fans both casual and hardcore!”

It’s not so much the agent of his enemies that Zayne should worry about, but more the ever-growing numbers of rakghouls that are hunting him. Plus, these are no ordinary rakghouls, they’re smart and organized. This new plague has been one of Taris’s best kept secrets, but in the pages of Vector, I have a feeling that it’s about to be busted wide open. What is the crux of Vector? I don’t know. But I do know that it will center around a rakghoul invasion and the Muur Talisman that will sweep through the galaxy. Not good!

The writing is stellar as always, but the new art hasn’t grown on me like I thought it would. There are times when I see greatness in the work on Scott Hepburn, then there are times when I wonder, “What the hell’s wrong with Zayne’s chin?” Hepburn is a capable artist who does very pretty splash page, but the lost me in the basic panel-to-panel of of the comic. I’m hoping that he can move up the extra inch to be on part with the level of writing.

Issue Grade: B

Series Grade: A-

Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic #25 (Dark Horse - Miller / Hepburn / Pimentel / Atiyeh) - A yearlong event with repercussions for every era and every hero in the Star Wars galaxy begins here!
When a terrible vision reaching more than four thousand years into the future alerts the secret Jedi Covenant to the importance of Taris, they activate an operative already on this planet overrun by Mandalorians. There, in the deadly Undercity, she will encounter a monstrous threat, an ancient legend, and Zayne Carrick, the Padawan accused of killing his fellow students! For anyone who never knew where to start with Star Wars comics, “Vector” is the perfect introduction to the entire Star Wars line! For any serious Star Wars fan, “Vector” is the must-see event of 2008, with major happenings throughout the most important moments of the galaxy’s history!

When I played through the first KOTOR game, I didn’t find the planet of Taris all the interesting. And the “threat” of the Rakghouls not all the threatening. Then I started reading the KOTOR comics and I finally get the idea of how terrifying these things are. The Rakghoul virus actually changes a person’s DNA to an entirely different species. A feral and monstrous species. That being said, the “terrible vision” is of an organized and deadly Rakghoul army which seem to be controlled by a dark Jedi wearing something called the Muur Talisman, a powerful artifact thousands of years old. The vision also included Zayne Carrick, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and Cade Skywalker. The stars of every Star Wars comics currently on the stands, but the kicker is their settings are thousands of years apart. So now the race is on for the Covenant to find the Muur Talisman, but you just know the Zayne Carrick is going to screw that up some how.

This is truly the beginning of a bigger story. Miller does an excellent job of writing a KOTOR issue, without having the ongoing KOTOR story get in the way. It’s perfect for bringing in new readers and still keeps the originality and comedy that I’ve grown to love from Miller’s writing. The art did take me out of the story a few times when I would look at a panel and think, “that angel looks kinda weird.”, but overall I enjoyed it.

Now to a point that John Jackson Miller brought up at a recent book signing I was at: There is no such thing as time-travel in the Star Wars universe. So how is it that all these characters will come together? I think it’s going to be like the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. There is going to be some kind of powerful event, I’m guessing centralized on the Muur Talisman, that will tie all the time streams together. No one will be able to time-travel, but they will be able to communicate with each other across time. Which should make the conversations between Vader, Luke, and Cade pretty interesting.

Grade: A