Review: ‘Revelations’ Offers a Preview of Next Year’s Slate of ‘Star Wars’ Comics
With the year coming to a close, Marvel and Star Wars are looking ahead to 2024 and at what’s to come for Star Wars comics. There’s a lot to look forward to with many current series coming to an end, many new series about to begin, and likely many upcoming surprises. Enter Star Wars: Revelations, serving as a preview for next year’s Star Wars comics.
Containing seven short stories, Star Wars: Revelations is like a sizzle reel for what’s to come. Some of the stories contained in this issue are meaty and have a lot of interesting story information to offer. But some are pretty short and don’t provide many future clues at all. It’s a mixture of good stuff and some just okay stuff. But like any preview looking to get audiences hyped, much of it depends on how invested the audience already is coming into it.
Spoilers below …
I’ll start with the good stuff. My favorite preview out of this entire collection was the preview for the upcoming Star Wars: Jango Fett comic series. The short sample for Jango Fett offers a good look at the tone and visuals for the upcoming comic. It’s got the right blend of action, intrigue, and hard-hitting bounty hunter violence that fans are looking for. It’s also got a cameo featuring fan-favorite Aurra Sing which is perfect for getting audiences hyped for the upcoming comic.
The second story that I’d like to highlight is Cavan Scott’s The High Republic preview. It’s a short, well-written, self-contained story that doesn’t offer too much of a teaser for what’s to come, but rather, is just a rousing and emotional short story with a proper beginning, middle, and end. It’s a delightful inclusion that’s great for fans of The High Republic and a nice refresher from all the “buy this upcoming product” promotions.
The weakest story out of this collection is very much the short preview of the upcoming Mace Windu comic. The short preview provided feels a lot like the short movie clips shown on late-night television or that play right before a movie where the clip is played completely out of context. It’s up to the audience to make out what’s going on. It is good to see some of the writing by Marc Bernardin, but it didn’t offer much about the direction that the series might go in.
There are many other surprises in Star Wars: Revelations. Again, a lot of this depends on how invested you are in all of Marvel’s Star Wars comics. But the reveals for the mainline Star Wars comic and for Doctor Aphra are intriguing within the context of their series — especially Doctor Aphra which is ending soon.
But Revelations does save its last major surprise for the end, which is a short story centered on Jabba the Hutt. It’s a darkly humorous comic that delves into more of the seedy criminal underworld. At the time of writing, Marvel hasn’t announced any new series with Jabba the Hutt as the main feature. However, given director Guillermo Del Toro’s recent comments about a scrapped Jabba the Hutt film, I can’t help but hope that we at least get a new comic spotlighting that blobby-looking worm.
Star Wars: Revelations doesn’t feel like a “run out and buy” comic, but it does offer a few good stories that are at least fun and intriguing for the future. While it’s tough to escape the feeling that these are just promotions for future projects, there’s enough content here to make many readers feel excited.
Score: 6/10
Born and raised in Hawaii, Jay Goodearl runs the YouTube Gaming channel “Good Games, Dude” His channel aims to open up video games to beginners and immediate players and help them understand what makes games the art form that it is.
