Review: Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren (Graphic Novel)

Publisher (D):
Panini Publishing House

ISBN:
978-3-741-62282-3

–

Genre:
Adventure | Science fiction | Action

Content:

The Jedi Temple of Luke Skywalker is on fire and the recently returning Padawan Hennix, Tai and Voe are shocked, they don’t even feel the presence of the Jedi Master himself anymore. The only one they meet in front of the burning ruins, completely dissolved and resigned, is Ben Solo who claims Master Luke attacked him. The three budding Jedi don’t believe him and fight, but Ben is stronger than expected and finally he manages to escape. He goes to a distant world to confer with the mysterious Snoke, whom he tells that he wants to visit the Knights of Ren. Ben has met them before, when he – still a boy – and Luke visited an old Jedi outpost on Elphrona, which dates back to the wedding of the Republic. Again he ends up at said temple before he meets the knights of Ren and their leader on Varnak. However, he has strict guidelines for accepting new knights into his elite caste …

Review:

In fact, I had Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren Has been on my agenda for a long time, is the original release of the four-part miniseries The Rise of Kylo Ren After all, it’s almost a year ago now, but as a German fan you’re used to – and ready – to wait (and yes, I know that I could have read the story in booklet form much earlier). So I was so excited about the tape, because I think Kylo Ren aka Ben Solo in the films is a very exciting and pleasantly ambivalent character, who certainly could have been made much more, but which is also much more exciting than some Protagonist who, due to the bumpy development history of the trilogy, seems to have been given away recently, which cannot necessarily be said of Kylo. Nevertheless, there are some mysteries, riddles and omissions about its genesis, which you now get roughly presented in this four-parter, even if it is more of a small, if formative excerpt from what Ben made Kylo become.

Just the fact that the films keep talking about the Knights of Ren – who got absolutely nothing to do, apart from looking cool at times – and Ben uses to call himself Kylo Ren, gave me a lot of puzzles , in which The rise of Kylo Ren actually able to remedy the situation. Otherwise, the introduction to the knights is just as successful as the opening scene with Ben, in which we see him in front of the burning Jedi Temple of Luke, before the oppressive moment is interrupted by the arrival of three budding Jedi who cannot grasp which picture offers itself to them. By the way, artist Will Sliney also plays here (Galaxy’s Edge – Das Sith-Relikt) develops his qualities early on and creates some impressive, memorable and imposing panels, so that you can definitely say that you have found exactly the right person for the job with him, to illustrate the genesis of Kylo Ren. Unfortunately, this quality does not last consistently and precisely where it would be important, namely to stage Ben’s conflicting emotions, unfortunately Sliney sometimes overshoots the mark with exaggerated facial expressions and gestures, even if the band is optically located in the upper third may be.

The actual story, meanwhile, is surprisingly nested for its brevity, but on closer inspection it is unfortunately not particularly complex, especially since here, too, some pages “have to” be used to advertise the “High Republic”, as has already been done in The path of fate has been the case. Nevertheless, author Charles Soule of course basically knows how to tell his stories and again delivers convincing food, which for me just held some enlightening moments in terms of the incomplete vita of our fickle antihero. Nevertheless, in the narrow framework of a four-part story, he is of course nowhere near answering all the questions, and the trip to Snoke, who has apparently been in telepathic contact with Ben from childhood, is fascinating and interesting in itself – especially the setting where the meeting takes place – but offers little further information about its role. On the other hand, the few scenes with Luke are really strong – and certainly expandable – whether these are flashbacks or dream sequences, especially since he is visually hit very well by Sliney and has the charisma of a wise, but also disillusioned Jedi master.

Surely there would be a lot more to do in some corners The rise of Kylo Ren can get out, but with the result you can without question live well and for my part I liked the story, especially since it is quite cleverly constructed and nested in one another, which always creates tension, especially since this structure also offers space in to look back at the time when Luke’s Jedi Temple had not yet fallen victim to the flames and from this time there is really not much material, while the narrative gaps between episode VI and episode VII are only closed very hesitantly when one looks at the previous canon publications consults. The final cover gallery is meanwhile meager and comes up with only four works of art, one of which is already emblazoned on the front of the anthology, but that can hardly be blamed for publication. What is far more annoying is that at one point a double-sided panel has actually been torn in two and accordingly hardly comes into its own if you have to constantly scroll back and forth in order to at least roughly grasp the extent of this – theoretically epic – moment. That could have been solved happier and fortunately I have never met this before. Another curiosity worth mentioning on the side is the cross-reference to the novel Skywalker’s return by Alan Dean Foster, because this is the very first companion novel to Star Wars from 1978, which did not fit smoothly into the old Expanded Universe and certainly should not be part of the new canon, but here in the style “You can read it in“is referenced.