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This year marks the 25th anniversary of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace hitting the
big screen, marking the Star Wars franchises return to theaters after 16 Years (not counting the
special editions released in the mid-90’s).
With the film’s anniversary & Star Wars Day
hitting in the same week, Greg Pak (writer), Will Sliney (artist), Guru-eFX (color artist), VC’s
Joe Caramagna (letterer) & (Phil Noto – cover artist) decided to do a fun look back at the film, that shed’s some light on one of the more important characters in the franchise.
The movie has been out for nearly 25 years now & most of us know the story. So how exactly do
you take such a well known story and put an interesting spin on it?
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You tell it entirely from the
perspective of Anakin Skywalker, the 9 year old boy born on Tatooine who is the focal point of
the first 6 films in the franchise. With that said, let’s jump right into the issue!
The first thing that jumps out with this issue is the artwork, and just how lifelike it is. Will Sliney
& Guru-eFX did an incredible job of taking characters we’ve seen on screen’s for 25 years and
brought them to the pages of this comic beautifully! The work Greg Pak did also stands out,
because he took an already well known story and fleshed it out a little bit by adding some scenes
into the story that you had to figure took place, but we just never saw on screen or on the pages
of the novelization.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW
The standout moment’s to me in this issue are the scenes that the creative team added to the story.
We see a couple of scenes before Qui-Gon & the crew from Naboo show up on the planet,
including the dream Anakin has about saving his mother & all the slaves on the planet that’s been
referenced in the film’s novelization. More impressively is the sequence that takes place after
Darth Maul & the Trade Federation are defeated.
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We finally get to see the moment between Anakin & Obi-Wan, who up to this point have maybe only said “Hello” to each other, reunite after everything that’s happened. And despite the unspoken tension between them Obi-Wan tells him about Qui-Gon’s last wish, to train Anakin & that he is the chosen one, and that Qui-Gon wasn’t the only one who believed in Anakin.
FINAL POINT:
The issue isn’t reinventing the wheel when it comes to telling the story of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. It’s a film we’ve all seen at least once, and are pretty familiar with the finer details of the story. But it is undaunted by the task of retelling the story. It breeze’s through the scene’s from the film & fleshes out some moments that happened off screen. It’s a fun read for anyone who’s seen the film, no matter how big of a Star Wars fan you are.
Score: 7.0 Out Of 10
Thanks for checking out my review on Nerd Initiative. For more of my content, check out ODPHpodcast.com and follow me on Twitter!
