Today saw the release of issue #3 in Dark Horse Comics’ Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures Phase III title, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
The High Republic Adventures (2023) #3 begins where the previous issue left off, with Jedi Padawan Lula Talisola having reunited with her lost love Zeen Mrala– a Force-sensitive non-Jedi of the Mikkian species. Lula has now abandoned her temporary life as a Nihil warlord and is recounting more of her journey from the fall of Starlight Beacon to the planet Eriadu. We get a few more pages of great mash-up art by illustrators Harvey Tolibao (in the “present” of the story) and Nick Brokenshire (documenting Talisola’s recent past), and then the two young women are also reunited with the galactic superstar Svi’no Atchapat (from writer Daniel José Older’s 2022 young-adult novel Star Wars: The High Republic – Midnight Horizon), while Lula recovers more memories of her conflict with Krix Kamerat prior to Starlight Beacon’s fall.
Then Jedi Master Kantam Sy steps in to help Talisola regain some of her lightsaber combat abilities, which seem to come back to her pretty quickly. The back half of this comic is about a hapless maintenance droid called B-333, who gets enlisted by Master Sy to cross the Nihil Stormwall into the Occlusion Zone with a hauler named Argomon on a mission to plant a tracker on a prison ship. There, we meet up with the Umbaran scientist Niv Drendow Apruk (who first appeared in the recent middle-grade novel Star Wars: The High Republic – Escape from Valo, also by Older with writer Alyssa Wong) and his Nameless pet– but before the droid can enact the plan, there’s a surprise appearance by another MIA Jedi character on the final page.
This is a solid issue overall with a lot of ins and outs for our characters, and I like what Older is doing in getting the ball rolling on the larger plot for Phase III’s arc. I also find myself appreciating more and more how each piece of media in The High Republic supports the others, with this comic touching on a number of the same narrative beats and themes of the novels I’ve been reading recently in the series. That Stormwall is proving to be a big problem for the Jedi Order and the Republic, so it makes sense that many of our protagonists are working with great effort to find ways around or through it before the Nihil’s grasp on that side of the galaxy becomes ever tighter.
Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures #3 is available now wherever comic books are sold.