I Read The KOTOR Comics

Back in September I had the opportunity to attend Stockholm Comic Con, and while browsing one of the booths there I found Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Old Republic Volume 1 on a shelf. (And you thought that SWTOR written out in full was a mouthful!) "Neat," I thought, "that must be that SWTOR comic series I remember hearing about" and bought it.

I was wrong and apparently the SWTOR comics are a different thing, as the series collected in this volume actually takes place in the KOTOR era, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment. Also, it still has some relevance to the game as several Cartel Market outfits were inspired by ones worn by characters in the comic for example. So I'd look at certain images and go...

Hey, that's the chest piece my Sentinel is wearing!

Or: Hey, that's the set Cal's Sage used to wear!

That was kind of amusing.

The comic itself was also entertaining enough, and I liked it enough to buy the other two volumes from Amazon.

The story is set during the Revan era, and s/he even makes several appearances as a shadowy figure, with the comic leaving his/her identity unclear as it was still respecting the fact that every KOTOR player had their own unique Revan. We get the backstory of the mysterious mask of Revan too.

The main story was interesting enough on its own as well, though it had its ups and downs. There were parts that were very good, but others were fairly mediocre.

I quite liked the main character Zayne Carrick, a Jedi who has a slightly awkward and uncomfortable relationship with the Force and who slowly learns how to deal with it over the course of the series (while pursuing other objectives).

The secondary protagonist and main female character Jarael left me feeling a bit disappointed: While she started out strong, she quickly became way too passive, mainly serving as an object for other characters to obsess over, which struck me as quite a shame.

The art was a bit of a mixed bag - I'm neither an art critic nor a comics connoisseur but I honestly wasn't that impressed by a lot of it. The worst thing was that the artists and style often changed quite drastically from one arc to the next, from pretty realistic to highly cartoonish. The former sometimes struggled to deliver the more humorous moments appropriately, and the latter was mainly used in an arc that was clearly meant to be quite dark and serious, leading to a horrible clash between tone and imagery.

Still, overall I can recommend this series. The writing is about on par with some of the better Star Wars tie-in novels (of which the author has also written several), so definitely worthwhile if you're into that sort of thing.