Awakening to Redeeming Questions

Ok, so I kinda went a bit crazy with that heading but it sounded good at the time. The awakening part has to do with my comic book club’s reading of Descender and how I jumped into the first issue all over again. The redeeming part has to do with my belief that The Mandalorian has taken a huge step in redeeming Star Wars. Finally, the questions part refers to my reading chapters 6 and 7 of The Rook where they perform an interrogation.

Each of these pieces came together today to make things enjoyable so I had to throw them all into this rambling post.

Redeeming Star Wars

In my view, I see the first two seasons of The Mandalorian as a redemption of the Star Wars brand. Yes, it is true, I’m not a big fan of the most recent trilogy and could have done without Solo, but I think Mando has really gone a long way to rebuilding some of my trust.

With so much of the final trilogy of the Skywalker Saga retelling and destroying the original trilogy, I have found myself wondering how to order the 3 sets of movies. That’s another post for some other time but suffice to say, none of the 2 follow-up trilogies have lived up to my expectations after the original completed with Jedi.

But with the destruction of my expectations by the movies, I am so happy to see that The Mandalorian has pretty much given me exactly what I wanted. Sure, I did not have many expectations going into the series since I had been burned too many times, but I did not expect to be so excited. So excited that at the end of season two I immediately went out to see when season 3 was gonna be released.

This series, in my mind, has truly redeemed the Star Wars brand. I’m excited to see what comes next; I’m excited to see where Baby Yoda (or rather Grogu) is going in the story, and I’m excited to see the spinoff series that this story creates.

Interrogation and Education

Chapters 6 and 7 provide a boatload of knowledge both for the reader and Myfanwy. Chapter 6 is all about the interrogation of someone who turns out to be an agent for the archenemies of the Checquy. This guy, after significant coercion, claims to be working for the Grafters and before we can get an understanding of who or what the Grafters are, he’s dead and we move off to a recollection of Myfanwy’s school days.

The descriptions of the time our heroine spent at the Estate were interesting but what the sidebar actually does is build the tension as we really want to learn more about the Grafters. We’ll have to wait until future chapters to do that, however.

Comicbook Club

Along with taking a journey back to reading The Rook, I also jumped back into Descender for my comicbook club.

While I’ve already read through the first volume of this story, we’re looking at volume 2 and while I kinda recall what went on in the first arc, I figured it would be good to refresh my memory.

So today I took a look back at the awakening of Tim-21 and the destruction brought on by the giant robotic Harvesters.

This first issue sure sets the hook well and I now remember why I was so eager to suggest we read the second volume for book club.

It’s a Wrap

All in all, today was a good day and one filled with science fiction. I’m certainly happy to see that The Mandalorian has done a good job in bringing my enjoyment back to the Star Wars universe. I look forward to and hope that Disney keeps putting out quality shows that live up to the brand and the sci-fi storytelling that makes Star Wars so good.

The scifi in The Rook is more of an internal kind of thing since we see Myfanwy observing lines of pain while watching the interrogation and dealing with the mental struggle of growing up different in a school for special kids.

Finally, I really enjoy sci-fi in comics and Descender is definitely a quality comic filled with sci-fi goodness.

As I said, today was a good one.

Ramble #555 2020.04.08| Awakening to Redeeming Questions