Star Wars: Crimson Reign

“War of the Bounty Hunters” was all about reintroducing Qi’ra, last seen in “Solo:  A Star Wars Story,” into the “Star Wars” universe post-”Empire Strikes Back.”  She was now heading the criminal organization known as Crimson Dawn and was planning on selling Han Solo (still in carbonite) to the highest bidder to announce its return.  Things didn’t go quite as planned, but Qi’ra still achieved her goal:  She let the galaxy know her organization was back and let the reader know that she had a lot of smart and deadly people placed within every major organization to help achieve her aims.  What are her aims?  That’s what writer Charles Soule and artist Steven Cummings are here to tell us in “Crimson Reign.”

While Qi’ra is present in a central role throughout this miniseries, it really isn’t about her.  Instead, Soule and Cummings are using this to help flesh out the people who are working for.  Some will likely be familiar to you:  I imagine there are a lot of people at least familiar with the Knights of Ren, and maybe some have even read the Soule-written miniseries featuring them.  Ochi of Bestoon from Geg Pak’s “Darth Vader” series is also here, along with Deathstick from “Bounty Hunters” along with a minor character of reasonable importance from that title.  Then there’s Madelin Sun, a former scholar and teacher, whose interest is in artifacts relating to the Dark Side and appears to be the only significant new character created for this miniseres.

“Crimson Reign” at least gives these characters some interesting things to do on Qi’ra’s behalf.  The Knights of Ren have been tasked with breaking into Vader’s home on Mustafar and stealing a Sith artifact from it.  Ochi is charged with letting a former employer know that he’s not as secure as he thinks he is.  Deathstick has to take care of that aforementioned minor character from “Bounty Hunters.”  As for Madelin, she’s been asked to track down a potential ally for Crimson Sun’s war against the Sith.  The ally Qi’ra has in mind is a certain Jedi Master who disappeared during the Order 66 purge, but whose death was never announced.  A Jedi Master by the name of Yoda.

Now if you read that last sentence and thought, “Wasn’t Yoda in exile up until the point Luke contacted him in ‘Empire?’” then you’ve begun to recognize the biggest problem with this miniseries.  You can’t really do much with Yoda during this time because the canon has been firm in that he’s been on Dagobah since the end of “Revenge of the Sith.”  Which means that you can probably guess how Madelin’s quest ultimately pans out.  Soule does his best to make things interesting, framing her quest as a reconsiderations on her views between the Light and Dark Sides, but it doesn’t change the fact that we all knew what the end result of her quest was going to be.

That’s also the issue hanging over “Crimson Reign” itself.  Given that the Empire was still as strong as ever at the start of “Return of the Jedi” it stands to reason that whatever Qi’ra and Crimson Dawn had planned didn’t work out the way they thought it was going to.  It all leads to having what Soule and Cummings are doing here feel like they’re building some unnecessary scaffolding onto the side of the “Star Wars” franchise.  A lot of work has clearly gone into this, but it’s all in the service of telling us a story where the ending is readily apparent at this point.  The miniseries even tips its hand in that regard, letting us know at the end of the first issue that what we’re reading is a tragedy.

The best thing I can say about this is that Soule is likely tipping his hand a bit too hard in that regard.  He’s too competent a writer to have not considered what I’ve just written about and I imagine he thinks that our assumptions are going to add weight to this sense of tragedy.  That we know we’re reading about a doomed effort to take out the Sith at the heart of the Empire and will empathize accordingly with Qi’ra and her comrades as a result.  I get it, but I’m not buying it yet.

That’s because Soule and Cummings only do a decent job with the storytelling here.  I’ve read a lot of stuff from the writer that I’ve enjoyed, but not a whole lot that I’ve felt passionate about.  His best work has been on DC’s “Swamp Thing” where he did a great job constantly introducing new concepts with each volume, building to a genuinely inspired finale.  His “Star Wars” work has generally been decent, with the best bits involving character work rather than stories.  I’ll refer you to how he made Terex, the antagonist in his “Poe Dameron” series, more interesting than the title character himself.

Here, there’s no real breakout character.  I like how he emphasizes their different approaches to their jobs, but they’re all fairly one-dimensional overall.  Most of their actions come off as if they’re serving the plot rather than their own agendas or personal interests.  This is especially true of Qi’ra as she’s built up a lot by the cast of this miniseries even though she doesn’t do anything really interesting over the course of it.  We see her get the ball rolling, talk us through her reasoning and the thoughts behind why she’s having certain things done, but there’s precious little character to her actions.  It was a surprise when it was revealed that she was the mastermind behind everything in “War of the Bounty Hunters,” and that still remains the most interesting thing about her here.

That lack of surprise bleeds into the art as well.  Cummings does a decent enough job capturing the overall look of “Star Wars” here and that’s about it.  The art here is decent but bland as you get the feeling that what’s going on here should look more exciting than it is.  I mean, you’ve got people breaking into Vader’s house and it all looks so matter-of-fact.  The same goes for when a mass of rock monsters are woken up by an ages-old Sith artifact.  There’s plenty of stuff here that sounds like it should make for exciting visual storytelling, but it never comes off that way on the page.

I guess that’s the real problem here.  The idea behind “Crimson Reign,” that there was a criminal organization posing a threat to the Sith between Episodes Five and Six, is a difficult one to make work.  It could’ve, if the writing and the art here had been good enough to sell us on the idea that what we’re reading was exciting and important even if we knew how it was all going to end.  I imagine the creators have some surprises in store for the concluding chapter of this saga, “Hidden Empire,” but it’s hard to imagine it being better than what we got here.