Star Wars: TIE Fighter #2 Review

Writer: Jody Houser

Artist: Rogê Antônio, Josh Cassara

Letterer: Joe Caramagna

Publisher: Marvel

The second issue in the new TIE Fighter miniseries picks up with Shadow Wing fighting other TIEs dispatched from the captured Star Destroyer Celerity while on a mission to the Kudon system to find out more about the mystery of the Celerity. 

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first issue in this series. I was apprehensive going into it because it had the job of introducing me to an almost entirely new cast and a new plot in the middle of a fairly unexplored time period with only twenty pages to do so. I'm enjoying Shadow Wing as a group more than I thought I would too. I'm typically not a fan of brand new elite Imperial squadrons like this (I think SCAR Squadron in the Star Wars series is a good example of this concept gone wrong) but I enjoy the analogy of Shadow Wing not being the all star team but instead the championship winners that no one saw coming. The four new members of the group each have distinct personalities that make them interesting and it's good to have one familiar character as a kind of anchor. Kudo itself is also familiar from Houser's past work.

The plot advances in some interesting ways even if we're still a bit early in the series to make judgements on it. For the time being, I think I find the characters and them getting fleshed out more interesting than the actual plot on Kudo. I suspect one of them won't make it through the end of the miniseries but I'm looking forward to seeing the group from a rebel perspective in the Alphabet Squadron novel that comes out in under a month now. 

I really enjoyed the flashback at the end of the issue. The previous issue's flashback focused on Zin while this one focuses on Lyttan, the only character who doesn't originate from this series but instead comes from the Han Solo: Imperial Cadet miniseries that ended not long before TIE began. The flashback gives us a look at where his brother, Tamu, from that series is and shows us a conversation between the two. There's a nice nod to Han and the events of the miniseries, and I liked seeing the brothers interact again. Using short flashbacks at the end of each issue to flesh out different members of the squadron individually is a good idea. I suspect the final flasback in the fifth issue will be about Teso and will illuminate him a bit more, because he's currently the most mysterious of the group.

Antônio's art is pretty good, certainly a big step up from some other regular Marvel Star Wars artists. I didn't like Cassara's work on the flashback as much, but it wasn't noticeably bad or anything. One minor nitpick I have is I think the serial miniseries could benefit from a recap page like Star Wars and Doctor Aphra have. TIE is the only other serial story running right now beside them, the others are anthologies that don't need recaps (Shadow of Vader and Galaxy's Edge). 

Overall it's a solid second installment in a promising miniseries. I look forward to seeing it develop further and I look forward to seeing how Alphabet Squadron interwines with it shortly.