Star Wars: Thrawn

When Disney acquired Lucasfilm and kicked the “Star Wars” Expanded Universe to the curb, Grand Admiral Thrawn immediately rose to the top of everyone’s lists of characters who they expected to see re-incorporated into this new continuity.  It’s not hard to understand why as he was the main antagonist of Timothy Zahn’s “Heir to the Empire” trilogy which served to reignite fan interest in the franchise during the early 90’s. After the character was featured in the “Rebels” series, Zahn got the chance to write a new novel showcasing Thrawn’s rise to power in the current continuity.  This miniseries, from writer Jody Houser and artist Luke Ross, is an adaptation of that novel and while I haven’t read the source material this holds up pretty well on its own.

That’s mainly because we get to see the character in a context where he has to struggle.  I always found Thrawn to be a frustrating character to get behind because he was the kind of villain who was always correct in his assumptions and plans.  Which left the impression on me that he was the kind of character who succeeds because the plot demands that he does rather than because of his own strength.  While that aspect of the character hasn’t really changed here, Zahn and Houser have pitched it against a more worthy adversary: the racism and bureaucracy of the Empire.  Thrawn is on an officer’s track in an organization that hates aliens and for all of his tactical genius, he has little facility or interest in playing politics. Seeing the character having to fight battles he wasn’t assured of winning for once went a long way towards making his story engaging here.

It also helps that this miniseries utilizes established characters like Emperor Palpatine and Grand Moff Tarkin well, and gives us some memorable new ones like Thrawn’s aide-de-camp Ensign Vanto.  Ross gives the story some appealingly detailed art while keeping the many conversation scenes visually interesting. That latter part is very important since Houser crafts a refreshingly dense script where every issue is almost its own self-contained story and is full of enough detail that it’ll take you longer than an hour to read through the whole thing.  “Thrawn” winds up being a great re-introduction to the character, to the point that I’d like to see what Houser and Ross can do with the follow-up novel that Zahn has written.