Star Wars: Battle of Jakku – Last Stand #4 – Adelhard’s Swan Song

The maxiseries Star Wars: Battle of Jakku wraps up telling an interesting side story to the events that take place during the Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy by Chuck Wendig. Unlike the story told in the novels, this series focused on Luke, who is mostly absent during the events of the novels, which works in the comic series to a large extent.

This series also had the opportunity to flesh out and build the character of Moff Adelhard,  who before this series appeared in the Battlefront video games and was mentioned in the companion novels. The series also did a good job of introducing new characters into the Star Wars mythos while giving fan favorites such as Doctor Aphra meaningful cameos. While the series focused on Luke, Adelhard, and the Spice Runners, it did a good job of using characters such as Rae Sloan and Gallius Rex from the novels as supporting characters as needed. The series fell short in tying into the larger story originally told in the Aftermath series. At times it was difficult to keep the events happening in the comic in line with the events from the books, such as Han Solo’s appearances and Leia’s pregnancy which seemed to come on all of a sudden in the comic series which takes place after the events of Endor and other canon novels. This is also evident in issue #4, with the narration taking place from a “looking backward” perspective and leaning hard into the events of the actual Battle of Jakku without many setups, like the space battle and Commodore Agate’s use of the tractor beam to ultimately bring down the Star Destroyer. It would have been useful if the editorial component could have been tighter and maybe provided some direction as to where the events of the comic series were taking place in the Aftermath story

Kirk’s art in this series is not some of his best as certain panel perspectives and anatomy of well-known characters seem off in certain areas of the story. That being said, his depiction of the Star Destoryer crashing into Jakku was stunning, Campbell’s color work goes along way into selling the story and artwork in the issue