TIE Fighter #5 Review

Writer: Jody Houser

Artist: Rogê Antônio, Juan Gedeon

Letterer: Joe Caramagna

Publisher: Marvel

This issue brings the TIE Fighter miniseries to a close, for now at least. Following the Imperial Shadow Wing of pilots, the series was designed to tie (heh) into the Alphabet Squadron novel that came out a few months ago. In this finale, the pilots of Shadow Wing launch an attack on a rebel base responsible for a slew of Imperial defections, including one of Shadow Wing's deceased members. 

When the series first launched, I was ambivalent towards it for a couple of issues. It was decent and it had good art but it didn't catch my attention much. The third issue was the one that really made me pay attention to the series. It swerved the plot in a direction I didn't see coming and made a couple of decisions that really surprised me. After the third issue, I was really looking forward to seeing where the series would go. 

Sadly, the last two issues didn't keep that momentum for me the way I hoped it would.

Killing off two of the five members of the squadron (the two most developed and sympathetic at that) in the third issue was a gutsy move that worked to shock me at the time, but a consequence of that decision is it means the series had to bring in two new cast members near the end of the story that I had no attachment towards. The series already had a tough job getting me attached to the team in the first three issues. The two new characters aren't bad per se, I just didn't care about them as much if at all. The finale also didn't have much tension for me and I wonder if it would have been better if the character deaths were saved for the final issue.

I assume that the series will get a followup next year, based on the ending of this issue and because we have more Alphabet books coming. If Zin and Dree had died here, it would have given the final issue a bigger punch and allowed for the next series to develop the new cast members from the start. 

Additionally, I was a bit let down by Jeela's flashback at the end of the issue. All of the previous issues have used the flashbacks to really develop the characters they focused on. Half of them also revealed some twist that changed our perspective on the character. Jeela was easily the least developed character of the series going into this issue so I was looking forward to learning more about her, but the flashback didn't feel like it added anything. Teso might have been a better character to save for the last issue. Jeela could have worked, but it would have had to do more than this did.

I still enjoyed the series a decent amount. The art is always on point and I care about most of the characters, which is still something I probably wouldn't have expected before the first issue. The ending of the main section of the issue does establish an interesting playground for the future and I'm looking forward to seeing more from this series, assuming it does get more.