Liking the Dark House comics work more than I liked the original movies. So far, so good. ( )

Not so talented Jedi Padawan Zayne Carrick finds himself targeted by the very Jedi masters that trained him. At first sight Zayne would be considered a Padawan with very weak link to the Force – but is that truly the case? He miraculously manages to stay alive no matter the dangers placed in front of him. Now with his allies, rag-tag group of smugglers and exiles, he is set to clean his name and expose the secret group that think that any goal justifies the means.

Great introduction to the story placed at the beginning of the infamous Mandalorian Wars.
Recommended. ( )

Boy, am I glad I took the time to hunt down this one! I sort of stumbled across this series on a comics website, thought it looked fairly interesting but was frustrated in my attempts to buy it. Nowhere seemed to have a copy of it (even Amazon!) despite the fact that it was only published in 2007. As a last resort I rang my local independent comic book store in Sheffield (England) and asked if they had a copy in store - and they did! Thank the Force for the Sheffield Space Centre! :-)
Commencement itself is refreshingly entertaining. I thought it might be a bit routine but appeal to the Star Wars geek within me. Turns out it's quite skilfully written and the artwork delivers a realistic air to the adventures as well. The premise is that useless padawan Zayne Carrick is framed for murder following the deaths of his fellow padawans. He goes on the run and a variety of interesting supporting characters get caught up in the whirlwind that follows. Pursued by Jedi, bounty hunters and the local authorities, Zayne tries to stay one step ahead whilst attempting to discover the reasons for his predicament.
It's fascinating stuff if you're a Star Wars fan and whn I finished it I went straight out and bought the second one in the series, Flashpoint. I heartily recommend it. ( )

Pre-Luke, pre-Anakin excitement: It's nearly 4,000 years before the birth of Luke Skywalker. Zayne Carrick is a Jedi initiate with some minor abilities in the Force and a ton of bad luck. Stationed with a team of Jedi masters and four peers in training on a planet on the outskirts of a war-torn region of space, Zayne is expecting to fail when the other initiates are knighted into the Jedi order. But when he arrives at the ceremony, he finds his friends dead at the hands of their masters. He escapes before he too can be murdered, and he soon finds himself on the run along with a handful of fellow fugitives.

This is the first chapter of what looks to be a fascinating story by John Jackson Miller. Brian Ching and Travel Foreman provide bold, colorful art to tell the tale. Zayne is an interesting character who, like the future Luke, is forced by circumstances to rise to the occasion. The question is, will he seek justice -- or revenge?

by Tom Knapp, Rambles.(n e t) editor

It started with the computer games Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, The Sith Lords: excellent Star Wars tales set in a period four thousand years before the era of the movies. The games apparently absorbed all the available awesome before Lucas could snare any to work into the scripts of the second three films, and now John Jackson Millar has tapped the same vein with tales set a few years before the games, using unrelated characters against the same backdrop of a galaxy in chaos with the Mandaloreans battling against the Republic.

Zayne Carrick is a padawan with a great deal of luck, both good and bad. He screws up in a big way on a regular basis, but manages to survive it each time; he despairs of ever becoming a Jedi Knight. And then he gets caught up in intra-Jedi intrigue, falls in among unsavory characters, and finds that when his back is up against the wall, there is some heroism in there after all. ( )