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(More customer reviews)Endgame is a denouement, a figurative and literal cleaning up and sorting out, the final chapter in Dark Horse's Clone Wars series. That doesn't mean there's nothing but talking heads and exposition. On the contrary, there's plenty of action in three stories about choice and consequence.
Chronologically, the volume begins with the 3-part "The Hidden Enemy," in which former Jedi double agent Quinlan Vos is on assignment to Kashyyk, fighting alongside Yoda and the Wookies against Trandoshan Slavers and the Separatist Droid Army. With the issuance of Order 66, Vos finds himself an enemy of the state, hunted, alone in a Kashyyk forest crawling with clones. The closing pages of the story have created some contention among regular readers of the Vos comics, but even so you'd be hard pressed to find more than a handful that don't believe John Ostrander and Jan Duursema are the best writer/artist team ever to work on a Star Wars comic. This is yet another excellent example of their witty writing, keen plotting, and creative composition - and for me at least the closing pages were a very pleasant surprise.
Endgame continues with the two-part " Into the Unknown," the tale of two Jedi on the run days after Order 66, the tale of two choices, of two Jedi trying to make sense of a world turned upside down.. For Master Kai Hudorra, the priority is survival, to live to fight another day, even if this means forsaking not only the Jedi but - for her own good - a young Padawan as well. For Jedi Dass Jennir, the motivation is duty and obligation to right what the Order helped create, to aid those now fearing reprisal from the Empire. Author Welles Hartley is to be commended. There is no recrimination here, from the characters nor from the author, only the sympathetic portrayal of events, which in the end point to the reader and ask - how would you choose? The message is only enhanced by the art, beautifully detailed work from Doug Wheatley, whose only fault here is in making Dass Jennir look far too much like Orlando Bloom's Legolas.
The final choice in this volume is left to the newly minted Darth Vader, who must obey his new master and forget his old one, or indulge his desire for revenge. Between Vader and his anger are a half-dozen Jedi spreading the word that Kenobi is among them, bait to lure Vader into their Sith trap. Impressively, writer John Ostrander presents in a just a few pages of his one-issue "Purge" a more interesting portrait of Anakin in the days following his reanimation than James Luceno did in 336 pages in his wreck of a novel, Dark Lord. Credit goes here, as well, to artist Doug Wheatley for bringing the action scenes to life. The only cringe-inducing moment was Vader yet again having his hand cut off.
This final chapter in Dark Horse's long running prequel era series (beginning back in 1998 as simply Star Wars) will be remembered most as the home of John Ostrandrer and Jan Duursema's stories about Jedi Quinlan Vos and his Padawan Ayala Secura. While those two will be missed, there is much to look forward to as Ostrander and Duursema launch the new post-Luke-Skywalker series, Legacy, and in the new post-Revenge-of-the-Sith series, Dark Times, featuring the continuing tales of Jedi Dass Jennir.
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