This is the graphic novel version of the trilogy of books. If I hadn't read the original books a long time ago, I would have had a really hard time following what was going on. The story itself is great but the execution as a comic is awful. ( )

http://www.girlsguidetoscifi.blogspot.ca/2012/10/not-droids-youre-looking-for-re...
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http://www.girlsguidetoscifi.blogspot.ca/2012/10/not-droids-youre-looking-for-re...
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Though I've read the novels many times, this was my first time reading the comics adaptation of Timothy Zahn's trilogy of Star Wars novels, Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command, making this a different sort of climax to my time of rereading New Republic-era Star Wars novels.

Unfortunately, although it was rarely bad, mostly this book served to remind me of a much superior work. Zahn's Thrawn novels are distinguished by their large, complex political plots; abbreviated into comics, each story is nothing but a series of haphazard and rapid scenes. Characters go places and do things for reasons the reader doesn't quite know, referring to things the reader hasn't seen. Though Baron gets better with this as the adaptations go on, they never become involving or deep.

The art itself is nice. Olivier Vatine and Fred Blanchard have a very distinctive style-- I love their narrow-eyed Thrawn-- and I certainly enjoy the work of Terry Dodson and Eric Shanower. (And since I complain about it so much elsewhere, never once did I feel here that a female character had been gratuitously sexualized, not even Mara to my surprise.) While it's nice to get visualizations of some of the story elements, this comic fails to add much of a new level of meaning to the original. Mostly, I just want to read the original now.