Comics Review: Star Wars: Invasion #1 (Dark Horse Comics) by Adam P.

New Star Wars mini-series gets off to slow start

The six Star Wars movies have spun off massive amounts of stories through Del Rey fiction books and Dark Horse comics. One of the most ambitious moves by Del Rey was to introduce the Yuuzhan Vong (who neither appear nor are mentioned in any of the movies) into their novels of the Star Wars universe. This vicious and bizarrely religious race has received a warm reception from fans after being introduced as a major threat to the galaxy after the events leading to the downfall of the Empire as recounted in the original trilogy.




As explained by the book's editor Randy Stradley in a column at the end of this issue, Dark Horse sat out publishing the Yuuzhan Vong chronicles, preferring to let Del Rey fully develop them before jumping into the ring with a comic book adaptation. Now that the dust has settled and the Yuuzhan Vong chronology is well-established, they make their comics debut in Star Wars: Invasion #1.

The Yuuzhan Vong is a well-developed race with many fascinating aspects to their technology, religion, and warmongering. Unfortunately, this is hardly introduced at all in this debut issue. We merely see the Yuuzhan Vong invade the peaceful planet of Artorias without warning in odd ships and proceed to round up the planet's inhabitants with the use of odd tubes leading up to their mothership. Thus the Yuuzhan Vong only looks somewhat frightening because of their physical appearance, but otherwise seem to be like any other violent bug-men from the stars which provide a backdrop for some Jedi heroics.

The king of Artorias, Caled Galfridian, is a veteran from the Battle of Hoth, and decides to fight back and attempt to rescue his wife and daughter from the invaders. His son, Finn, exhibits Jedi tendencies and is invited to come to Yavin-4 by Luke Skywalker himself to begin training as a Jedi.

That about sums up this issue, unfortunately. The characters are relatively simplistic: the king is brave, the son is brash, and the daughter, Kaye, is feisty. The book is as straight-forward as can be, and serves only to show us that the Yuuzhan Vong are merciless warriors bent on enslaving the galaxy. You can bet Luke Skywalker and co. will have something to say about it.

The art is nice, but not stellar (no pun intended). It's certainly not a distraction, and there are some nice coastal scenes and market sequences, but the reader is left hoping that we're going to really bite into the Yuuzhan Vong mythos, and see what makes them tick, both visually and philosophically, sooner rather than later.

An unfortunately slow and paint-by-numbers beginning to a highly-hoped for series, one that has a lot of potential for Dark Horse and that will undoubtedly deepen in issues to come.

7/10
Adam P.
Review Co-Editor