It all comes back around.
The first arc of this Star Wars: Rebels tie-in covered the basics of Kanan Jarrus’ origin story and his evolution from wide-eyed Padawan to hardened smuggler. Clearly, with the expansion from mini-series to ongoing, marvel and writer Greg Weisman felt there was plenty more ground to cover as far as Kanan’s journey goes. And that’s almost certainly true, but this transitional issue doesn’t do much to tap into that potential.
This issue basically serves as an epilogue to the book’s first story arc, as an adult Kanan and the crew of the Ghost travel to Kaller and Kanan is confronted with the ghosts of his past. That’s not even a metaphorical description of the issue’s contents. Several panels feature ghostly renderings of Kanan’s dead friends, comrades and enemies staring at him. It’s a rather heavy-handed way of conveying the character’s psychological distress. Not to mention the problem that, aside from Kanan being distraught at returning to his old stomping ground, there really isn’t much to the conflict.
The narration only exacerbates this problem. This series has always stood out from the rest of Marvel’s Star Wars offerings because it relies on narrative captions where most books opt for the cinematic, dialogue-focused approach. That’s not to say this approach can’t work. The book is inherently more introspective, after all. But here, the narration does little but hammer home simple thoughts and emotions that should be easily conveyed through dialogue and visuals.
Speaking of which, regular artist Pepe Larraz is replaced by Jacopo Camgni for this issue. Camagni’s style is a decent match for Larraz’s, especially with colorist David Curiel providing some visual continuity. It continues the book’s approach of offering a smoother, more organic take on Rebels’ animation style while still striving to be more exaggerated than the other Star Wars comics. The problem is that Camagni’s storytelling isn’t up Larraz’s standard. The character designs are a little less distinctive and the action a bit more flat and less dynamic.
The best that can be said about this issue is that it takes advantage of the shift in time period and offers a glimpse of the full Rebels cast. It’s fun seeing Ezra, Hera and the rest in action, but that appeal only goes so far in a book dedicated to fleshing out Kanan’s past.
Star Wars: Kanan continues to lag behind Marvel’s various other Star Wars projects. There’s plenty of potential with the concept, but this issue struggles to make anything of Kanan’s return to Kaller or offer an effective transition into the second story arc. The art is at least consistent with previous issues, but not up to Larraz’s storytelling standard.
