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A review by neonhammer
Star Wars Omnibus: Clone Wars, Volume 3: The Republic Falls by Miles Lane, W. Haden Blackman, John Ostrander
2.0
So I'm using this to represent all three of the Clone Wars omnibus books, which I read, but only select comics from (always more than a third, but less than 3/4 for each book, mostly focusing on stories about Durge and Ventress or anything that caught my eye as I skimmed). So this is going to be more like thoughts on the Clone Wars comics of the early 2000s rather than this specific book.
Not crazy about how they originally covered Clone Wars which makes me glad that the 2008 animated series (which I've been watching) takes the place of these stories and incorporates some elements. A lot of the stories feel way too bloated, too much action, too much talking, but also remarkably hollow. I'm sure this style of writing works for some Star Wars fans but not for me (though I may reject the label of Star Wars fan altogether, in spite of this marathon). The art varies a bit but was generally pretty solid. The included one-shot experimental stories are generally too narratively brief to be wholly effective but the art is absolutely gorgeous and they did more for me than most of the main comics here. Everything just seems really violent and miserable in a way that's fitting for the period in the saga, but isn't much fun to read despite how "cool" and "badass" a lot of the scenes seem to want to be perceived. Durge is the biggest oddity, resembling something out of a 90s Rob Liefeld comic, just super over powered and covered in bulging muscles and armor. It just reeks of wanting to be extreme and gritty and running into such a power curve that *spoiler* his eventual demise feels totally arbitrary *end spoiler*. Ventress is perhaps more compelling than her animated counterpart was (as a pretty generic Sith at least, I'm only in Season 3 and I've heard she changes as it goes on), but perhaps not as compelling as her role in the Dooku: Jedi Lost audiodrama. The final issue in this third omnibus featuring her, does something really cool though, that added a lot to her character. Grievous on the other hand starts very strong with a pretty fantastic origin story issue before devolving into uninteresting killing Jedi comics that reminded me of the 2001 maul miniseries in the worst way, and I ended up skimming the back half of his stuff. Grievous's self loathing of his mechanized body, caused by his current master, is really compelling and they only explore that for an issue and then he seems to go stale, just like how Maul can clearly be really compelling in the right hands, but he needs more than just being a badass for that to work. My favorite parts of the Clone Wars TV series so far are the episodes focused on the clones as people and the episodes focused on the political side of the conflict (usually through Padme's eyes), but both of these fronts are mostly absent in these comics. We rarely see political struggle, instead sticking to the battlefield, and thus only see Padme once in the flesh and one in hologram for only a few lines, and she feels really missing from these stories considering how important she is to Anakin, which makes her reduced to only how she relates to her husband rather than as her own person. And the clones play surprisingly little role in the main action of the issues I read outside of the named ARC trooper, Alpha, who had less personality in the several issues he appeared in than any of the Domino Squad in their first episode of the TV show. My recommendation is to just read the Visionaries collection instead which features the experimental one-shot comics, including the Grievous origin, and then watch the best episodes of the animated series instead. Not that these comics are bad, but they just feel like a chore to get through without much reward.
Not crazy about how they originally covered Clone Wars which makes me glad that the 2008 animated series (which I've been watching) takes the place of these stories and incorporates some elements. A lot of the stories feel way too bloated, too much action, too much talking, but also remarkably hollow. I'm sure this style of writing works for some Star Wars fans but not for me (though I may reject the label of Star Wars fan altogether, in spite of this marathon). The art varies a bit but was generally pretty solid. The included one-shot experimental stories are generally too narratively brief to be wholly effective but the art is absolutely gorgeous and they did more for me than most of the main comics here. Everything just seems really violent and miserable in a way that's fitting for the period in the saga, but isn't much fun to read despite how "cool" and "badass" a lot of the scenes seem to want to be perceived. Durge is the biggest oddity, resembling something out of a 90s Rob Liefeld comic, just super over powered and covered in bulging muscles and armor. It just reeks of wanting to be extreme and gritty and running into such a power curve that *spoiler* his eventual demise feels totally arbitrary *end spoiler*. Ventress is perhaps more compelling than her animated counterpart was (as a pretty generic Sith at least, I'm only in Season 3 and I've heard she changes as it goes on), but perhaps not as compelling as her role in the Dooku: Jedi Lost audiodrama. The final issue in this third omnibus featuring her, does something really cool though, that added a lot to her character. Grievous on the other hand starts very strong with a pretty fantastic origin story issue before devolving into uninteresting killing Jedi comics that reminded me of the 2001 maul miniseries in the worst way, and I ended up skimming the back half of his stuff. Grievous's self loathing of his mechanized body, caused by his current master, is really compelling and they only explore that for an issue and then he seems to go stale, just like how Maul can clearly be really compelling in the right hands, but he needs more than just being a badass for that to work. My favorite parts of the Clone Wars TV series so far are the episodes focused on the clones as people and the episodes focused on the political side of the conflict (usually through Padme's eyes), but both of these fronts are mostly absent in these comics. We rarely see political struggle, instead sticking to the battlefield, and thus only see Padme once in the flesh and one in hologram for only a few lines, and she feels really missing from these stories considering how important she is to Anakin, which makes her reduced to only how she relates to her husband rather than as her own person. And the clones play surprisingly little role in the main action of the issues I read outside of the named ARC trooper, Alpha, who had less personality in the several issues he appeared in than any of the Domino Squad in their first episode of the TV show. My recommendation is to just read the Visionaries collection instead which features the experimental one-shot comics, including the Grievous origin, and then watch the best episodes of the animated series instead. Not that these comics are bad, but they just feel like a chore to get through without much reward.