Broken Frontier

In the age of the Old Republic, Jedi fought Sith in large numbers; it was centuries before one boy would be a new hope against an Empire. Now, it's up to a spy to find one of the greatest of the Jedi, and find out what's going on behind Sith sectors. 

The Lost Suns is a new miniseries tying in with an upcoming MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic. The Lost Suns is, as you'd expect from an unreleased video game tie-in to a franchise that's running off of seven theatrical movies and a library's worth of an extended universe, a very dense and unfriendly read. 

Narration, typically, is meant to explain things to an otherwise-unknowing reader. This book decides to unnecessarily make things denser and almost humorously unrelatable. "The ash plains of Lenico and the asteroid-hives of Gelpog the Tyrant" seems so removed from reality that it becomes hard to mentally craft these worlds that our characters have visited, even if most of the words are in a language we can understand. "Necroswarm colonies" and "Chaospheres", alongside absurd names of characters and places, stretch reality farther than a long time ago, consistently reminding us that it takes place in a galaxy far, far away. Thankfully, concepts such as a corporation announcing that they're hiring and military spokespeople denying misdeeds in an assault seem ripped from our headlines.

For those not well-versed in Star Wars beyond the movies, characters, concepts, and situations may seem suspect. Why would Jedi be teaming up with what look to be Stormtroopers? This is set thousands of years before Darth Vader and characters we love... With such a foregone conclusion of where the universe is going, why should I care? These are all valid questions that someone tackling this book with no deeper knowledge would ask. 

As Alexander Freed's script bounces between relatable situations and unmanageable dialogue, Dave Ross' breakdowns and George Freeman's finishes go from nearly reaching the highs of a John Romita, Jr. while touching on the lows of an early 1990s C-list comic book company. It doesn't help that Michael Atiyeh's colors appear mostly done in markers but strive for a watercolor look that Francis Manapul thrives in. Some panels work fine, such as a two-page spread of a city. Others, such as in a zoomed-in face of a character, just go too sharp from color to color, offering no real graduations. 

The Lost Suns is not a good book to pick up on a whim. Presumably, if you know any of these characters and situations, you may find this to be a decent comic. If you have no notion what's going on, or even if you've taken a few stabs into the beast that is the Star Wars Extended Universe, you may have no idea what the plot is. There's no real drive to get this unless you know what it is going into it.