Sunday, January 14, 2007

Graphic Novel A Day: Star Wars General Grievous

Writer: Chuck Dixon
Artist: Rick Leonardi
Company: Dark Horse
Price: $12.95 ($10.75 at Amazon)

I'm cheating a bit, because I actually read this a couple weeks back, but I haven't read any graphic novels over the last day or so, and so I'm finally giving this one a write-up. At any rate, this is a mostly forgettable although decently done miniseries tying into Episode III. My hope was that Dixon and Leonardi, both known for doing solid if rarely spectacular work, would be giving us the never-revealed origin of Grievous. That doesn't happen here. Instead, it's a story of Grievous killing Jedi and kidnapping Jedi children, and of Jedi children standing up to him. It's about some Jedi seeking revenge because the council is too wussy to stand up to him. Basically, it highlights a lot of what I didn't like about the character, as opposed to what I did, which was the stuff in the Tartakovsky cartoons. That said, there's some solid action, an interesting backstory tying in Empire Strikes Back's Ugnaughts to the Republic era and he's still a more interesting character here than he was in the movie. Seriously, George, a cough? That's the tic you gave your big bad guy? Why not have him limp and have trouble going to the bathroom too?

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