Star Wars Review: Dawn of the Jedi: Prisoner of Bogan

Unfortunately, this concept is as far as this story goes. Unlike most modern comic collections, Prisoner of Bogan does not tell a story. It tells a middle chapter. There is really no beginning or end here, despite the fact that Force Storm clearly functions as a self-contained event and there is no reason to give Force Wars extra baggage when it’s got, you know, a war to tell.

The one other writing problem is that it recognizes the inherent problems of Bogan without doing anything to address them. The concept of Bogan is that it is a prison where individuals who are falling or have fallen to the Dark Side are exiled in order to meditate and find their way back to the light. It is sort of like locking violent criminals in a wrestling ring with no hope of respite for the violence, or like trying to cure slash fiction addicts by locking their browsers to only slashfic.org. If somebody really wants to get back to society and truly feels that they’ve made a mistake, this is a terrible prison, and they might be able to meditate themselves back to rehabilitation. For anybody who is honestly falling to the Dark Side, on the other hand, this is the most worthless form of rehab.

Those are pretty much the only complaints I have about the writing. As installments of a monthly comic, this is fine. It’s not the best story ever, but it is perfectly reasonable as a continuation. Unfortunately, “perfectly reasonable as a continuation” limits the amount of people I an recommend this to.

The artwork is much of the same. It’s fine. It lives up to the high standards of what we expect from the current Star Wars comic team. And that’s about it. There’s nothing I can particularly glorify, nothing to complain about. For many others this would be an artistic accomplishment, but for the team behind Republic/Clone Wars Legacy and now Dawn of the Jedi it’s run of the mill.

There is one issue I’ve had with the visuals, but since I can’t seem to find any other reference to this online, it might only a be a problem with my specific copy. That problem is the lettering. It seems the spaces between words – or even letters – was left out, and all of the text is crammed as tightly within a section of the speech bubbles as possible. Unfortunately, I have no way to tell without buying another copy if this is a standard problem or just one with the copy I bought. If anybody else owns this, please let me know whether you’ve faced any problems with the lettering.

While this volume doesn’t give much to recommend it on its own merits, it is the middle chapter of a great series so far. Dawn of the Jedi has something for fans of any element in the Star Wars universe, or for Science Fiction or fantasy fans in general. My recommendation is to take a look at Force Storm and if you like it enough to continue the series, pick up Prisoner of Bogan and Force Wars both.