Review: Star Wars: The High Republic #1

Star Wars: The High Republic #1
Marvel Comics
Published: January 6, 2021
Marvel Unlimited: April 12, 2021
W: Cavan Scott
A: Ario Anindito, Annalisa Leoni

When 2021 started, so did the High Republic era of Star Wars; novels were released with these comics, and eventually we’ll get the story in other mediums. We also got a new timeline; along with the High Republic era, we got the Fall of the Jedi (prequel trilogy, The Clone Wars), Reign of the Empire (The Bad Batch, Solo: A Star Wars Story), Age of Rebellion (Rebels, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the original trilogy), the New Republic (The Mandalorian), and the Rise of the First Order (Resistance, the sequel trilogy).

This story takes place after the events of the first High Republic novel, The Light of the Jedi. The Republic’s Starlight Beacon space station is about of officially open (which is details a little more in the novel). We start on Shuraden, where Padawan Kanrii Trennis is about to start her trials to become a Jedi Knight. During the first trial, a swarm of insects start to destroy everything in their path. Trennis abandons the the trial to help save the planet. At the same time, Jedi Master Avar Kriss, aboard the Starlight Beacon, is discussing changes to Jedi Master Sskeer (Trennis’s master) with Jedi Master Estala Maru; they discuss his recent accident, but determine his issues are more than his injury. They are interrupted by Jedi Grandmasters Veter and Yoda; they inform Kriss that she will be the new marshal of the Starlight Beacon.

The story moves back to Trennis, who realizes the Starlight Beacon, which sends a message to everyone throughout the Outer Rim, is disrupting the frequency the insects follow to get home; this is causing the issues on Shuraden. Trennis gets the Starlight Beacon to change it’s frequency and uses her ship to get the insects back on track. Trennis returns to Sskeer to apologize for disappearing during the trials and losing their ship.

Sskeer and Trennis return to the Starlight Beacon, where she learns that the insect issue was her actual trial and she’s now a Jedi Master. The issue ends with the grand opening of the Starlight Beacon.

It’s a solid set up issue. The writing is pretty standard for a Star Wars comics, which isn’t surprising since Scott has written Star Wars canon material.

The issue with the story is it gives some minor spoilers to Light of the Jedi, specifically that Sskeer is injured and another Jedi is killed; since I haven’t finished Light of the Jedi, this could impact my enjoyment of the book. I wish they would have noted this at the beginning of the book.

The art is pretty good. The characters look like they are from Star Wars and the colors are pretty vivid.

Rating: 4 out of 5. It’s a solid set up issue for the next era of Star Wars stories. There is a lot of potential here and it appears that they are going to not waste it.