Star Wars: Shadow of Maul #4
“Blood Gamble”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Madibek Musabekov
Colorist: Luis Guerrero
Cover Artist: Derrick Chew
You can’t have a crime saga without a heist, preferably during a sporting event. In Star Wars, that means podracing. Don’t worry, this one won’t give you Phantom Menace flashbacks…
Now This is Podracing
A heist under the cover of a podrace, with double and triple crosses. Plus some backstory on our lead, Brander Lawson. Sounds like a good time to me.
The Star Gauntlet is a once-a-year event on Janix—a huge podrace that uses the city itself as the track. Dirty tricks and explosions are not only expected, but they’re encouraged. It’s a good opportunity for lots of bad behaviors.
Captain Lawson and Two-Boots are watching from high above the city for signs of especially foul play. One racer in particular, Tor Braxis, seems extra crazy this year.
Turns out two of the biggest crime bosses on Janix, Deemis and Vario, made competing bets on Braxis. Before Lawson can act, a huge crash occurs, taking out the majority of the racers in a massive explosion! In the chaos, Braxis slips away to rob the casino holding all the bets on the race, but he’s greeted by a red double-bladed lightsaber…
Place Your Bets
This issue was an enjoyable ride (no pun intended).
This series has been very episodic, but each issue uses and builds upon characters and themes from the previous ones, so it’s been working well. Because we’ve spent time with both Deemis and Vario before, we understand why it’s a big deal when one of them sponsors Braxis and the other bets against him. We know chaos is going to follow—and follow, it does.
The backdrop of the podrace and the massive amounts of betting that go on around it also gives us some needed backstory on Lawson. It’s a little clunky in execution—I don’t understand why casino manager Rheena would need to tell Lawson a story about events that he was directly a part of. There should have been a more elegant way to deliver that particular bit of exposition.
At this point, I love how the series has taken the Shadow of Maul title very literally. The Sith Lord gets only a few pages or even just panels each issue, but his presence looms large over everything going on throughout. And as of the end of this issue, he’s a very rich Sith Lord.
The episodic nature of the series, plus the largely looming presence of Maul, does leave me wondering how the creative team is going to wrap everything up in the final issue next month. As a matter of fact, I’m not entirely sure what the main throughplot for them to wrap up even is. That’s not to say this hasn’t been a fun series, because it definitely has been, but I just don’t feel much urgency going into the finale.
The House Always Wins
Our Masters of Ceremonies for this issue’s sporting event are the regular creative team of Benjamin Percy and Madibek Musabekov.
Percy keeps things moving along, with Lawson’s narration providing much of the “crime story” feel. His pacing is solid for the most part, giving each moment enough time to breathe and never wearing out one’s welcome. As I mentioned earlier, the way he delivered the backstory on Lawson and Rheena was incredibly clunky, so that was a little disappointing. I just don’t see why she’d tell him a story about events he was part of, unless he’d suffered a brutal knock to the head and was having memory problems. Percy’s kept things pretty tight throughout this series, so that just really stood out to me.
Musabekov’s artwork continues to work well for the stories being told here, mixing realistic characters with the grimy techno feel of the city. The casino shown in this issue is ostentatious and busy, which is perfect for the hub of all betting going on around the Star Gauntlet. The race itself looks very cool, with a variety of ships and plenty of crashes and explosions.
Luis Guerrero’s color work continues to add to the crime feel of the series. The city itself is both dark and grimy, but it also hides some of the dirt beneath neon lights. Those pale in comparison to the bright lights of the casino, though. That place stands out as wholly apart from the rest of the settings we’ve seen so far. And I’m a sucker for a good lightsaber glow, which we get at a dramatic moment here.
Cashing Out
Star Wars: Shadow of Maul #4 tells an exciting story of a podrace and a heist, with some double-crosses and clunky backstory mixed in for good measure. Each issue of this series has delivered as a standalone crime tale, but it’s just hard to see where the overall whole is heading before the big finish. I’ll be back to find out, though.