7.30.2015

Star Wars Issue 7 Review: Obi-Wan Kenobi Stand-Alone

     This issue drew me in due to it being a stand-alone issue, featuring the fan favorite character Obi-Wan Kenobi.  It is set as a story-within-a-story in the form of a journal (that Luke obtained in an earlier issue) in a time a few years after Episode 3, as Luke is just a small boy.


     Obi-Wan wrote in the journal about his withdrawal.  He talks about the difficulty he is going through with his path into self-imposed exile from his former life as General and Jedi Master into his new life as the recluse Old Ben.  He must adapt his life to hide his abilities and remain a nobody whilst attempting to secretly use the Force to protect people from Jabba the Hutt's goons.


     Along the way we see his struggle with losing his original goal, and the disappointment at not being able to train Luke Skywalker as a Jedi because Owen Lars forbids it.  This creates an interesting dilemma- Obi-Wan already feels like a failure with his responsibility for Anakin's turn to the Dark Side, and wants to make up for it with Luke, but he is thwarted by Lars.
     He is stuck in a position where he yearns to do things, an almost desperate need to use the Force, but he must find a way to balance using it with keeping it hidden.  The problem is huge for him.  As a Jedi his whole life was in tandem with the Force, and now in seclusion, he has to cut himself off from both people, and that life.

     Simon Bianchi's art serves to display the great toll isolation takes on Obi-Wan.  Oddly enough, the opposite is true for Jason Aaron's writing of Luke Skywalker in this issue.  He is shown as a headstrong boy, which feels to wrong to match with his naive farm hand persona from A New Hope.  It is a small complaint but it seems a little off-putting and out of character.

     Overall, Star Wars #7 is a nice small tale for fans firmly nestled between films.


     My only other complaint is actually with Kenobi in general- if he went into hiding, why did he continue wearing the traditional Jedi garb?  I mean seriously, someone should've recognized he was wearing standard issue Jedi clothes during all those years he was posing as a cantankerous old man.

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