Matt Fillbach

When this series of short comic stories done in the style of Cartoon Network's Clone Wars cartoons started back in 2004, I was pretty tepid-- how much for a book that small? The first volume, by regular Republic writer Haden Blackman, didn't really impress either. But my determination to gather all literary incarnations of the saga of the Clone Wars demanded I go on, and so I did. Fortunately, the series improved with time, as the writers came to understand the kinds of stories the highly show more visually stylized art was best suited to tell. And because of that, some of the best stories have been consistently penned by the Fillbach Brothers, who first began serving on the series as artists. This of course made the prospect of Volume 9, as an all-Fillbach spectacular, highly appealing to me. And fortunately, it did not disappoint. It features four stories of the usual types in this series-- a dialogue-light "giant creature" story, a clone trooper story, a spy story, and battling Jedi story-- and pulls them all off with aplomb. Mindless fun, but superbly done mindless fun. Though it probably took me longer to write this review than it did to read the book. (originally written December 2007) show less

The Colossus of Destiny wants to be an awesome Mace Windu story, but it has a hard time painting Mace's impulsiveness and determination as anything other than stupid recklessness. Basically, this story wouldn't've had to happen if Mace had stopped and thought for a moment. Is the moral of the story that Mace will never ever be written as well as in Shatterpoint? Probably. Excellent art from the Fillbach Brothers as always, of course.

One of my reasons for loving Clone Wars Adventures, the series (based on the 2-D cartoon) that was replaced by this series of The Clone Wars graphic novellas (based on the 3-D cartoon), was the art of the Fillbach Brothers, who I think are cartoonists par excellence; their work on the series was kinetic and delightful. Unfortunately, their style I think suffers a bit when forced to conform to the style of the 3-D cartoon, which is in the case in The Suncrasher Trap, a story of Obi-Wan, show more Anakin, Ahsoka, and company trying to stop a Separatist superweapon. It's basically fine; as a big fan of DC in the 1980s, I was glad to see Mike W. Barr on scripting duties (I had no idea he was still writing comics!) but it's a bit staid. I think the flat coloring of the 2-D series suits the Fillbachs' art style much more than the shaded coloring attempting to mimic the 3-D series. (In some later novellas, the artists don't seem to have to conform to the show's art style as much; I wish that had been true here.) show less

Half are great and half are weak with obvious plots, tissue thin characters, and passable artwork. It seemed like a lot of the writers thought it was noir just to write about crime and put in a twist, but noir is really a mood and an evocation, not just shadowy panels and dames with obscure motives. Many feel like snippets of a bigger whole but the few pieces that sing really go to town. Lime I said about six or so on here that really get what noir means.