Free Comic Friday: Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures (2023)

Free Comic Book Day 2023: Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures
“Starlight Coda”
Writer: Daniel Jose Older
Pencils and Inks: Harvey Tolibao
Colors: Michelle Madsen
Lettering: Comicraft's Jimmy Betancourt and Tyler Smith
Cover: Tolibao with Kevin Tolibao

“Team Toph”
Script: Amy Chu
Art and Colors: Kelly Matthews and Nichole Matthews
Lettering: Richard Starkings and Betancourt
Published by: Dark Horse
Released: May 6, 2023

With Free Comic Book Day 2024 falling on May the Fourth,* a #FreeComicFriday with a Star Wars issue seemed in order. I went all the way back to 2023 for my selection and also my first foray into the High Republic, set several hundred years before the Skywalker Saga.

It starts off with a bang, and a creepy one at that, as a bunch of apparent Jedi, padawans, younglings and a spiky guy with a blaster rifle face off against an unseen foe. The mood is set right away by the opening line: “Something stalks us through the corridors of Starlight Beacon. Our home.”

Consider me intrigued.

The character featured on the cover, Lula Talisola, takes charge and pitches a plan to get the younglings to safety. Then things get a little confusing.

A few of the older members of the group, including a human-looking male who I didn't see in any of the previous group shots, lead the kids down a corridor. That guy and someone I think is the same species as that Episode I ne'er-do-well Sebulba – one's named Bibs and the other is Rardal, though I don't know which is which – go charging after a growling something-or-other in the darkness. A short, mohawked, blue guy named Qort follows, slashing something with his lightsaber, but gets wounded in the process. Somebody named Krix starts shooting at them, and Lula – with whom it's clear Krix has a history – goes to take her on while the rest look for an exit from whatever Starlight Beacon is.

The spiky dude with the blaster is the last one standing in the other part of Starlight, when a big guy who looks like a Twi'lek with horns who was just with the others finds him. His name is Master Buckets, and he's changed clothes? He says someone else needed his robes more than he did but the younglings and Qort evacuated safely.

Whatever incapacitated the others seems to be generating fear and confusion. And apparently it's separate from Krix's crew, the Nihil, who Spiky** says are hunting Jedi. Buckets' solution is to hide their lightsabers and don maintenance uniforms.

We don't see how this plays out because the story cuts back to Lula and Krix fiercely battling it out. Krix plans to detonate the beam on which Lula is standing, which I know from her dialogue, not necessarily the art. But Lula maybe force chokes Krix and then slashes where she's standing, saying “If I go down, you're coming with me.” There's an explosion, a flash of Lula forehead-to-forehead with a female character not seen before in this story and then the place I assume is Starlight goes boom and falls into the water below.

Clearly, I know nothing about “The High Republic” and its characters. A bit of Googling tells me the fall of Starlight Beacon was a major event in that era and portrayed in a “High Republic” comic published by Marvel, which you might think is doing all the Star Wars comics these days because they're also owned by Disney. But Dark Horse is actually publishing some of them again, even though the original “High Republic Adventures” comics came from IDW.

The story inside is just as confusing to me, although I'm sure people who had been reading other High Republic material would probably be OK with it. It doesn't make it very effective as a gateway to prospective new readers though.

I also wasn't enthused to learn Zeena is Lula's friend-turned-love-interest, their relationship championed online as a positive portrayal of an LGBTQ+ couple. This is billed as an all-ages book, although in fairness, there's nothing remotely graphic or anything like that. I'm not used to those portrayals being in material aimed at younger readers, but it's happening more and more. I'm not going to say creators shouldn't promote agendas or beliefs in general because, to be fair, that would include a ban on anything I do agree with, as well as themes, like this, that conflict with my own convictions. But this isn't something I want to read about or feel is appropriate.

The opening atmosphere is well done, and the art is good, it just doesn't always work with the text to deliver clarity. At one point, I assumed this story was at least a partial reprint from somewhere else, but the solicitation on the Free Comic Book Day website lists it as exclusive original material. Maybe it was expanded upon in a later issue.

I had an easier time following the second story from another Dark Horse licensed property, “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” The story is called “Team Toph” in the credits on the inside cover, but “Lost and Found” is the title on the page.

This marks my first narrative encounter of any sort with that franchise, and I know nothing about the world it inhabits, the characters or anything beyond the most obvious inferences one can make from terms like “airbender” and “earthbender.”

This story finds four characters who appear to be teenagers or thereabouts riding a fluffy flying creature and discovering a ravaged village. Toph, the earthbender, uses her abilities to find a survivor buried in the rubble, a young girl named Luumi. Although Toph seems pretty gruff and a bit overconfident, she puts Luumi at ease and showcases her earth-moving abilities for the girl.

They eventually find her grandparents in the forest near the village and surmise Luumi survived in part because she inherited her mother's earthbending abilities as well. The quartet get back on their fuzzy transport – a sky bison, I learned from the dialogue – and discuss the training of Aang, who I think is the main character? Clearly I didn't Google this one, but I also didn't need to to figure out the basics of the story. I'm left with the same impression of “Avatar” I had going in – I might have liked it when I was younger and might still enjoy it now if I had enough bandwidth for more sprawling mythology.

* - … be with you.

** - Not his name. At least, I don't think it is.