Today saw the release of the second issue of Marvel Comics’ current Star Wars: Mace Windu miniseries, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this installment.
Mace Windu #2 begins where the previous issue left off– with the titular Jedi Master having caught up with pirate Azita Cruuz on the refinery moon of Ro Mira. Cruuz takes Mace through a hidden entrance into an underground tunnel system, where they chat as they walk, not to mention encounter some blue-hot lava flows and so-called “Bore Worms.” Are you still in the mood for more worms after the Sandworms in Dune: Part 2 and the Ice-Wyrms in last week’s episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch? Then you’re in the right place, because this issue has a lot of worm-related action, along with some interesting conversation between our protagonist and his new acquaintance. We learn about Azita’s job as a smuggler and get her philosophical take on free will before the worms attack, and then she shows Windu the glittering source of a new type of Coaxium Ultra hyperfuel deep within the caves.
Then writer Marc Bernardin and artist Georges Jeanty cut to a familiar location on Tatooine– namely Jabba the Hutt’s desert palace– where Jabba’s majordomo at the time Naroon Cuthus (lifted directed from the Legends short-story collection Star Wars: Tales from Jabba’s Palace, though this is his first appearance in the current Disney-era canon) hires a diminutive Anzellan bounty hunter by the name of Yaya Shram (newly introduced here) to go after the Coaxium Ultra as well. Back on Ro Mira, Mace Windu has used the Force to put the Bore Worms to sleep, but they wake up just in time to chase them over a chasm bridge by a Force-levitated fallen stalactite. After a narrow escape, there’s some more pontificating between Mace and Azita, and then we’re introduced to Diya and Muro, two members of a sect known as the Dusk Weavers of the Had’le Path. They watch from a distance and debate whether to tell someone or something called the Shroud about the two interlopers.
So you see, there are a lot of interested parties going after this new type of Coaxium, a fact that Mace has already come to regret, telling Azita Cruuz that she should have contacted the Jedi Order– and only the Jedi Order– for help. This issue ends with Cruuz considering selling Windu the formula for the hyperfuel, while Diya and Muro privately threaten to “purify the galaxy with fire” from the shadows. It’s a good amount of new information to take in, but I have to say I enjoyed this issue overall, especially considering how chatty it is in the moments surrounding the brief action sequences. It’s nice to hear Master Windu’s thoughts on certain matters, such as his reluctance to harm innocent creatures who are only trying to survive. There’s also what I half-suspect to be a tongue-in-cheek callout to recent fan insistence that the Star Wars franchise tackle “What If?”-type scenarios, with Mace saying it’s “a pointless exercise.” It’s moments like that that made me smile regularly while flipping through this chapter, and the excellent artwork by Jeanty (with inker Dexter Vines and colorist Andrew Dalhouse) going a long way to make this a comic worth reading as well.
Star Wars: Mace Windu #2 is available now wherever comic books are sold.