Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Dawn Of The Jedi #0Dawn Of The Jedi #0
Dark Horse Comics
Ostrander & Duursema

The zero issue of the new Star Wars series is essentially a handbook for the new series. The book basically explains the general set-up of the Star Wars universe some 30,000 years before the films take place. Overall, the book does a good job of moving the massive amount of information and pieces into place in preparation of the new series but I was a little turned off by the price point and the absence of any story pages. Based on how dense this book is with information it sure seems like this will be mandatory reading if you want to hit the ground running when you pick up the first issue in two weeks.

What's interesting about this book is the title: Dawn of the Jedi. I pictured some character witnessing some sort of near death experience of a friend or loved one and in that moment of desperation they invoke the force for the first time. Thankfully, that is not the case here.

In this book there already are Jedi and Sith but they aren't exactly organized the way most people know them. In fact, much of what is cannon is changed, even if just slightly. There are variations of temples and lightsaber-like weapons and concepts of light and dark. The main difference in this book is actually the setup of the universe.

In this book there seem to be very few worlds. The capability of lightspeed travel is limited and it most likely will shrink the scope down of the Star Wars universe significantly. There also doesn't appear to be a ton of species which might also help in the early going because the names are certainly not as straight forward as Luke, Han and Leia.

Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle ReviewsThe book gives a lot of details about places and provides a lot of character names but not a lot of pictures of the characters or descriptions. The artwork actually depicts much of the characters and places in the same way you would expect Star Wars to look. When you glance at the characters and their clothing you probably wouldn't guess that the book takes place so many millennia before the movies.

I wish this book had some story introduction as the Star Wars Legacy zero issue contained. I think it would have helped to justify the $3.50 cover charge. However, the comic is still twenty-two pages and it is a solid read. The question about whether or not you should pick this up is dependent upon how much Wikipedia-like knowledge you want going into the first issue. If you would rather let everything play out in the story then you can skip this. If you want the universe setup going in and you want to understand how the characters are related then this book is a must have upfront and while you read the first few issues of the series. This book definitely has me prepared and excited for the series launch.

3 out of 5 Geek Goggles