Purple vs. Green

Star Wars: Jedi of the Republic: Mace Windu #4

Writer: Matt Owens
Penciler: Denys Cowan & Edgar Salazar
Inker: Roberto Poggi & Scott Hanna
Colorist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Published by Marvel Comics, 2017

Characters

• The Good: Mace Windu, Rissa Mano, Kit Fisto, Cyslin Myr
• The Bad: Prosset Dibs, AD-W4, Droids, ‘Master’ Drooz

Book I, Part IV

This issue is a lot of fun as we see Mace as a Padawan with his master, Cyslin Myr, we see a battle between two Jedi, and we see the beginning of the assault of the Jedi team against the Separatists on Hissrich.

I’ll start with the history lesson where we see Mace as he’s becoming a Jedi under his master Cyslin Myr. She seems pretty wise and confident and is easily able to handle the headstrong padawan. They’re on a mission to a planet named Mathas to find what’s happened to the Jedi that was stationed there. There’s been a plague on the planet, and someone, a ‘Master’ Drooz, has taken the role of the Jedi Master of the temple. As far as the council knows, they’ve never heard of this Drooz.

It turns out Drooz is simply an opportunist who is taking advantage of the suffering natives, and the Jedi are not too pleased. When Cyslin has to save a bunch of people at the temple, she sends Mace to apprehend Drooz, and a pretty cool fight ensues. The only question is…will Mace restrain himself from slicing Drooz into little pieces.

Along with the exciting backstory to Windu’s current situation, we see his current conflict with Prosset Dibs. Dibs is upset that the Jedi knew about the power source on Hissrich and, for some reason, feels that they should have refrained from taking action on the planet. I’m not sure if he feels they should have let the Separatists have the planet or if he’s just pissed that the Council didn’t give him a full briefing. Either way, I find this part of the story a bit hard to take since Dibs has apparently been a Jedi for a while and should know that even the Knights aren’t fully informed of all of the Council’s motivations. I mean, sure, I can see him being upset that the Droids are killing the inhabitants, but I’m not sure how he thinks the Jedi knowing about the power source would have made a difference in how the Separatists treated the locals.

Regardless, his anger leads to another cool fight between Mace and Dibs. Purple vs. Green lightsaber. From this fight and the dialog that occurs during it, we can see that Mace learned a lot from Cyslin. And in the end, Mace subdues the errant Jedi to take back to the Council to decide his fate.

Finally, the rest of the Jedi actually get down to the business they were sent to Hissrich for…stopping the Separatist army of droids. Three Jedi should be enough to stop a bunch of tin cans – right? Well, we’ll have to wait until the next issue to find out even though Kit Fisto makes a grand entrance into the Droid stronghold to confront AD-W4.

Verdict

On the whole, I think this issue was a success. The artwork and choreography were well portrayed, and I enjoyed seeing the fight between Mace and Dibs as well as his early battle against Drooz. I’m still a bit confused about the motivations of Prosset Dibs, but I accept that he had a problem seeing all the violence enacted on the innocent civilian population. Why he takes his anger out on Mace, I’m not so sure, but the resultant fight was at least fun to see.

With that said, I rate this issue a Read and look forward to seeing the series wrap up in the next issue.

This comic can be found on Comixology, on Marvel Unlimited, or at your local comic book shop.

Comic Corner | Reading Recommendation of Star Wars: Jedi of the Republic: Mace Windu #4