Review: ‘Mace Windu’ Comic Comes to an Extremely Disappointing End
What a letdown. After a strong first half for this year’s Mace Windu comic, the series completely drops the ball in the second half, with extremely bland art, a story with zero revelations, and a weak villain. But what’s even worse is, after all of that, it has the gall to hint at possibly more to come.
Mace Windu issue #4 is disappointing on so many levels. If readers or fans of Mace Windu are looking for an intriguing story about the character, look elsewhere.
Spoilers below …
With issue #4, the focus is put on The Shroud. Who is The Shroud? A group of nobodies that believe society has become too reliant on technology and looks to usher the galaxy back to the Stone Age. Do they have any cool abilities? Do they have any interesting motivations behind this? Do any of the members have any unique or memorable designs? The answer to all questions is “no.” There are two generic members of this cult and the main leader. But the two followers at the start cower away as soon as things get tough.
Do readers get any more backstory about Mace Windu and his childhood home that was set up in the past two issues? Nope. Does the thief Mace Windu is working with, Aziz, get any more exposition regarding her past? Negative. Any bit of interesting lore development or fascinating world-building is tossed out the window to focus on The Shroud.
And what about the leader of this group? Perhaps he’s able to spice things up a little? He does somewhat. It’s revealed that he dropped out of the Jedi order and is now neither Jedi nor Sith. It also turns out he is practically invincible as an entire ship gets dropped on him, yet he still survives. But why should I care when he’s introduced so late into this series? The leader ends up being just as generic as his henchmen, only now he’s invulnerable.
Funny enough, in the first two issues, I found artist Georges Jeanty’s art to be great. But in this last issue, Jeanty’s art can be abysmal, with little flow between panels, and extremely awkward poses and compositions for the character. I’ll admit, some three-fourths and full-page panels do look good, but for the most part, it’s a confusing mess from panel to panel.
Over the past few weeks, we here at Star Wars News Net have given some fairly critical reviews of the latest Star Wars comics, and rightly so. Whether it be Thrawn: Alliances ending right in the middle of its story, or the recent below-average issues of The High Republic, the quality of Marvel’s Star Wars comics has been very wishy-washy. That’s not to say there haven’t been a few hits in recent weeks, such as the recent Darth Vader and Star Wars series. But with this last issue of Mace Windu, I’m left wondering what’s going on at Marvel.
Score: 3/10
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.
