Star Wars Adventures #20 Review

Writers: Cavan Scott, George Mann

Artist: Derek Charm, Valentina Pinto

Letterer: Tom B. Long

Publisher: IDW

I thought this was a pretty solidly average issue of Adventures.

The main story is written by Cavan Scott, who is establishing himself as a key part of the Star Wars universe. On top of consistently writing stories for Adventures and Vader's Castle, Scott also writes the Choose Your Destiny series of kids books, authored the upcoming Dooku: Jedi Lost audio drama, and is working with four other authors on the mysterious Project Luminous. His work always feels authentically Star Wars and I'm always happy to see his name attached to something. 

His story here is roughly what I expect to see from Adventures on a monthly basis. It isn't the most surprising story but it's a nice all ages tale with a good moral, Anakin and Yoda in character, and some interesting new concepts. General Flebek is an odd new character, her role feels like it could have been better suited for Ventress if the story was set earlier in the timeline, but now that she exists I wouldn't be against seeing her in another story down the line (I feel similarly about Bats from the previous issue). Charm's art fits the tone of the series perfectly, as always. 

The story also has the most adorable baby Kyuzo so that's an automatic win there. 

The backup issue about Barriss Offee is a bit less memorable. Probably the best part of the story is Pinto's artwork, it worked especially well with the Forces of Destiny story she illustrated that also featured Barriss. I think it's a little ironic that both the main and backup stories are child-friendly tales about Jedi that will fall to the Dark Side and kill innocents not too long after their events. The plot of the backup isn't bad per se, it just isn't much of an original plot. I had to reread the story while writing this review to remember what it was about.  

This was the final story in a trilogy of prequel trilogy-focused stories so the next issue begins our series of original trilogy-focused stories. The solicits for all three stories sound interesting so I can't wait to see how they turn out!