I won't bag on the art too much beyond saying it wasn't really my cup of tea and I felt it was really ineffective at setting mood, setting up the emotional stakes, telling a coherent visual story, or making many parts of the visuals appealing

On to the story

First off let me say this:

i was fucking right again

I knew there was a reason disney was holding back extra info about Ben in the form of books or comics

and this book makes it pretty clear.

Ben didn't kill the students at the temple. Magic Snoke/Palpatine lightening did!

And he didn't even kill any of his friends until one last one at the end. and he lied about it and continued to attempt to spare their lives

This information changes the entire context of Kylo Ren within the movies since that's the first thing you hear after that whole village thing and go "wow fuck dude. what the fuck"

so you knoow

It's SO WEIRD but there is one thing I loved on a purely shallow and hilarious note

I was right. never doubt my instincts when it comes to merchandising

and it's when the original Ren is like "this kid looks like an actual trash bag"

IT MADE NO SENSE TO HAVE NO KYLO REN EXTRA MATERIAL

I KNEW THEY WERE HIDING A HUGE CONTEXTUALIZING THING THAT WOULD CHANGE HIS CHARACTER

alright now all that said

but sob I'm sorry you're just now finding out all this; life is pain

No its fine

I actually always thought he never killed the other students willfully

so this actually confirms that

This story is still.... not entirely shitty but filled with a lot of issues so i'm

Literally going to have to ignore most of it

first off: This story took away Ben's agency which lessens the impact of anything he does

Ben says he has no choice in this story, and it's true

My pet theory is that TRoS was going to address something about all of this to make it tie together

and it got removed because the execs wanted to appease the angry fanboys who are still buttmad that luke wasn't perfect space hero boy

But Ben really has no choice

his friends don't believe him when he says luke tried to kill him, he doesn't blow up the temple but someone else so it makes him look incredibly guilty

He unintentionally kills a friend and everyone thinks he did it on purpose

and then he goes with the knights of ren to do ... a thing. and then his friend is trying to talk him down and ren kills his friend in front of him

and of course he just looks super guilty and this book keeps demanding that I believe he chose this path but i'm like

It gave him no choice, it removes the entire impact of ben making any choice because this story suffocated him into making the final choice to first kill ren and then kill his remaining friend

also

That is all some

extremely traumatizing shit and it's not to say that ben doesn't have issues

mao he clearly does

But the fact that none of the movies play into that makes this just

really bad writing

It's trying to fill in gaps and adding cheap emotional stakes just to get the audience to feel bad or sorry and not thinking about what those story telling decisions mean

Secondly

How the fuck is this book gonna tell me that Ben had been training with luke for 14 years

How is this book gonna convince me luke had an entire jedi temple that big set up for over a decade and the jedi were not meaningfully involved in anything

This comic just like: Ben Solo is a baby who did nothing wrong, sorry suckers he's still dead.

How are you gonna tell me kylo ren was literally trained for 14 years under Luke skywalker and could just fucking destroy everyone in his path considering the movies emphasized he was one of the last talented force users

I can stretch my imagination

But not that much

Third: Wait why was ben the only one in a little hut and they had this whole advanced building for padawans?

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????

so he could sleep naked

Third, I believe somewhere out there the books talk about Ben still being with his mother into his teens

so having him join Luke's Jedi Camp at 10 is just

????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I thought he was supposed to be like 14?

he was 10

i checked the wiki

Again. I am ignoring large swaths of this

I don't even believe 14 would be an age at which leia would be comfortable with ben joining

you know

considering what happened to their father

also i hate how this book characterized snoke and Bens in their scenes together

It even defangs snoke which, imo, is unforgivable.

Shifting all the "bad" on to Ren was a terrible mistake

I don't know what i am supposed to feel about any of the contents except "oh well he should have chosen differently except for the fact that he said exactly what happened and guess what no one believed him"

and then theres a vague throwaway line about him realizing he hadn't killed luke which makes Luke not intervening sooner look even worse

speaking of that

ugh I thought it made Snoke seem even creepier and I got even more grooming vibes from him

I mean

it should have been snoke pushing things

not a character who has no impact on anything ever again

I just went, gross gross gross I hate this to Snoke

but yeah I think they tried too hard to explain the KoR

there is another implication that luke knew snoke in some fashion

Which i hate

no one gives a shit

about the KoR

because again

it makes luke look stupid, cowardly, and blind

I always figured what happened after ben left to go join snoke was more like

Ben gets there, wants acceptance and love, Snoke accepts him-- and that's when the physical and spiritual abuse starts

the whole thing is pretty nonsensical, like the KoR had this connection to Snoke sort of? And Snoke had been in Ben's head for... ever...

nearly immediately and intensely

I figured snoke had always been in bens head but i feel as though this comic botched it

badly

but why make Ren this super uber bad guy

with no real philosophy besides "idk let's fuck things up"

it held no sensitivity towards the abusive relationship Ben had with snoke. It was very soft ball on the grooming towards the end

It defanged ben. it defanged snoke

who cares about 80s anti hero ren

and yeah it just really felt like they wanted to fill up space for this story instead of like

put something together that was more thoughtful

I'll be taking elements. but most of it i'm not gonna actively be using in RP because it was just bad

it just bugs me that they put out something that made it super clear they wanted very little to actually be Ben's fault...

yeah

... but too bad he's still dead, we just did it to make you hurt more.

again it took away his agency and made every choice he made have zero impact

so it was like "why even read this at this point"

yeah maybe i would have felt better about it if they covered any of this in the movies and actually showed a turning point where these events are actually talked about in the movie

like cut out the palpatine shit and have ghost luke speak with rey and be like "I was wrong about Ben, Rey. I was wrong this entire time. I had thought I saw darkness in him, but it was snoke. Snoke was the one who destroyed my temple that night. My students tried to save Ben, but they failed"

and then its like "OH YEAH NOW THIS HOLDS ANY SORT OF RELEVANCE TO THE ACTUAL MOVIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I did like the moment of Rey feeling cold the moment Ben fell to the Dark... though the implication that turning to the Dark side is just a one-and-done deal was dumb.

yeah pretty much

but I like the idea that they were always connected and never knew it

I mean they're a Dyad

that means they were Always connected

I wish they'd played with that more in the movies tho

before and after and present

like they kind of alluded to it when Kylo was all like "!!! what girl???" like he knew her

LIKE I really did think that night when Luke looked into Bens mind what he saw was a vision from Snoke and not from the force

essentially Snoke manipulating Luke in that moment

I just wish they'd figured out what the fuck their deal is earlier I guess!

ooh that makes sense

The dyad was always planned, it's pretty clear

TRoS was just rewritten so much because, again,

they wanted to appease the angry fans

they made a movie with all the fan demands and that's what it got them

yeah

I just appreciate more dyad stuff

so any time we get confirmation that they could sense each other even before they knew they existed my heart is joyful

trutru

I'm just heavily disappointed

does someone want to hire me to write and illustrate a better version

Because serious i fucking hate the art so much

The covers aren't bad, but the comic art is awful

diuadia I KEEP SAYING I SHOULDNT HARSH ON THE ART BUT I MEAN

the writer of the comic also did a fanfic auction that ended up being a luke and ben story

which is cute

https://cdn.discordapp.c...

THAT 80S ANTIVILLAIN

lmao

i'm vaguely sorry to trash the creators this much because i am sure they were under a lot of harsh restrictions from disney

but this was not it for me

I like what it confirms but am overall unimpressed

I think what i'll take from it is shifting ben to arrive at lukes a bit earlier, keeping the other students as his friends around in his back story, but probably largely dropping the ren story line because

again

it held no weight

confirmation that the temple destruction wasn't Ben? great.

I'm still confused about .... all of that

but I also still like the idea that Ben did actually kill his friends, but it was because they didn't believe him when he says that luke attacked him and they all start coming at him and he has to defend himself

It was either entirely Snoke or it was Snoke helping, like maybe Ben lashed out and some things broke and then Snoke was like stoking the fire

but yeah

having to kill his friends in defense is better

or maybe the knights come by snoke's behest and start killign people and then ren kills his biffle and Ben kills ren

Like it was weird and stretched out and like

I'll be real

the death of his friends was

Kind of

Comedic

I know it was supposed to be horrifying but it was like "WHOOPS LET ME WHACKILY THROW THAT LIGHTSABER BACK TO SAVE THE OTHER GAL AND WHOOPS LOOKS LIKE OTHER DUDE GOT DISEMBOWLED"

lolol

I'm just talking to the other dude and WHOOPS HIS HEAD GOT SUPER SNAPPED AROUND BY REN

and again

14 years of ben being in jedi training camp

is way too long

it's way too long for Luke to not notice "something is REALLY wrong with ben"

the only way that long makes sense is if Luke intentionally held him back

and didn't let him develop his full potential

It's way too long to explain away the absolute lack of jedis in the movies

I could see him being super overly cautious with a young Ben

And it's way too long to not explore what Luke and Ben's relationship was like in detail

again, I can see Leia not wanting to put ben into training that young

at all

and it became a last resort because his powers were out of control

but that

is the great thing about comics

You can generally count on having to ignore 80% of what comes out of comics

lol yeah

the timeline is super wonky

like everyone whining about how they handled luke in the last jedi

and I'm over here

a batman fan

going

"................................i mean"

"You'll learn how to deal"

for the record it was always harder for me to get into the batman comics since there are about ten thousand different interpretations of him

keep what you like for headcanon and throw the rest in the trash

You really have to creep around and find the bits you like

the writing is so inconsistent, no one keeps anything straight

Japan's system with manga and anime still definitely has flaws and none of it is perfect

But at the very least it's generally one writer on any one series

and you can see the difference that people will have in interpretation just based on manga v anime

theyve gotten better about it in recent years

a good comparison is fruits basket manga vs the FIRSt anime and the REMAKE

the first anime went full on "THIS IS A COMEDY HAREM!!!" because the manga wasn't nearly finished and the artist/author of fruits basket hated it

and now with the second anime they are loyally and faithfully keeping to her original writing and the tone is much different

i honestly think american media needs to get it's head out of it's ass in this regard to story telling in big serial stories like this

If they had sat down and had a dedicated writer instead of doing the usual hollywood system for the sequels AND GAME OF THRONES FOR THAT MATTER

and had ONE person who's clear vision they were following

Instead of the usual gambit of "lets have about 40 different writers who decide to change up shit on the fly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

like

dihoasodahsod

I'm just frustrated. this shit happens so much in not just star wars but a lot of american media and it makes things become very frustrating to watch

alright i am gonna

feed some cats

draw some art

I really should draw some art. I can't just shit on comic artists with out putting my money where my mouth is

LOOK Y'ALL I LOVE COMIC BOOK ART A LOT

its literally the only thing which kept me from the depths of my depression at age 12+. I love how the way you use panels and negative space dictates timing. I love how you can give hints about environment or brief little glimpses into whats actually going on

Or how you can see a persons personality, the tone they like in a story, or even what the story is supposed to be JUST from the panelling

comic book art is the shit. it's horrific it's dying such a prolonged and painful death in america because christ the american system is absolutely bonkers

oh also i'm stuck on whether i should buy the thing or not

i'm on a "disney you are not getting my money on this shit you are trying to feed me I am really mad at how you fucked over every single person in tros production" binge

But then again it may help to be like "hey look. people are buying kylo ren stuff so maybe yall should think about that again"

I bought it like the tool I am bc gimme more Kylo

as is ur god given right