Star Wars: Jedi Knights #5 Review

by Henry Wood

Written by Marc Guggenheim

Illustrated by Madibek Musabekov

Colored by Luis Guerrero

Lettered by Travis Lanham

Edited by Drew Baumgartner, Mikey J. Basso, Mark Paniccia, Danny Khazem, Robert Simpson & Grace Orriss

We know the final fate of Jedi Master Yaddle, how she will die at the hands of the deadly Count Dooku. But years earlier, the two friends shared an adventure together where Dooku was in mortal danger! Did Yaddle save the life of the man destined to kill her? And if so, did she know what she was doing?

First off, Madibek Musabekov and Luis Guerrero continue on their incredible run with the art in this book. The shading on the faces and bodies in this book are still unmatched in the rest of the currently running Star Wars comics. That’s not a dig at the other artists working on Star Wars comics at all, I just want to highlight how good a job both of them are doing in this book. Everything just looks so crisp and defined. There’s a panel later in the issue where Musabekov draws a gust of wind blowing dust through a chamber in the ship. It does such a good job of showing the motion of the dust moving through that room. The way Madibek draws the scars and injuries on Yaddle’s face at the end are also incredibly well done. There’s just enough detail to show it without overwhelming the reader, and Luis Guerrero’s colors make it that much more vibrant.

Okay, onto the story in the issue. Yaddle and young Jedi Knight Seera Longa, a new character for this series, have arrived at Liskan to moderate a corporate dispute between the Trade Federation and Gillantier Corp. We get an appearance from Nute Gunray, and Guggenheim once again is showing us how the galaxy operates in the years before Star Wars: The Phanom Menace. The Jedi are basically just acting as mediators in a corporate dispute, something that I think most readers would view as a bad idea for the Jedi to be doing.

Dooku’s appearance in this issue looms large as the entire point of his inclusion is to make a point about Yaddle’s character. Yaddle is a character that I think deserves a bit more exploration. We’ve had her in The High Republic: Cataclysm which I enjoyed, and this gives even more of a look into her psyche. She is very focused on doing what the Force wills and trusts completely in the force. It’s an interesting view of the Force, and implies somewhat that she knows at least part of what is to come. 

She’s also wary of Dooku, a sentiment she must not share with the rest of the Jedi given how he is welcomed back to the Temple in Tales of the Jedi. The issue also sets up that Dooku is working with the Trade Federation, something we know he would be doing later in the films as well, though this does give us an earlier date. I would be interested to see Dooku show up again in this series.

Overall, I think the issue is pretty good, although as has become standard with this series, the ending of the issue feels rather abrupt. Madibek Musabekov and Luis Guerrero continue being the highlight of the book and I don’t see that coming to an end anytime soon.