Star Wars: Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller, Books 3 & 4

Star Wars: Knight Errant, Volume Two: Deluge

Collection published: 2012
Contents originally published: 2011-12
Acquired: January 2013
Read: December 2025

Scripts: John Jackson Miller
Pencils: Ivan Rodriguez, Iban Coello, David Daza, Marco Castiello
Pencil Assists: Andrea Chella
Inks: Ivan Rodriguez, Sergio Abad, Vincenzo Acunzo
Colors: Michael Atiyeh
Letters: Michael Heisler

Knight Errant lasted two more story arcs after its novel installment: thus, volumes two and three make up books three and four of the series. I feel like these deliberately tried to remedy some of the faults of the first comic arc and the novel, in that both delve into Kerra Holt's backstory more and thus her characterization. In volume two, Deluge, Kerra returns to her home planet for the first time since her childhood, alongside a squadron of Republic starfighters who actually dare to fight the Sith. The story delves into her childhood friendships, her guilt, and her expectations for the actions of others.

This was certainly my favorite Knight Errant story, though it still has its weaknesses. While some other Knight Errant arcs feel a bit stretched, this one actually feels compressed: the idea that Kerra had a positive relationship with the squadron, and then they kind of betray her, and then she redeems them, is a good one, but her relationship with them feels squeezed in amongst everything else the story is doing. I think this needed more time to breathe in order to be effective. 

Additionally, the story suffers from the same thing as the rest of the Knight Errant comics, which is inconsistent and low-quality artwork. The art is fine enough I suppose, but struggles to communicate action—in a very action-focused series—and doesn't do a lot with faces—in a series with few supporting characters, there's not much character-revealing dialogue, which means we need to learn character from art.

Still, I enjoyed it well enough, and if the series had gone on like this (or gone on at all), it would have been solid enough even if it never hit the heights of writer John Jackson Miller's Knights of the Old Republic. 

Star Wars: Knight Errant, Volume Three: Escape

Collection published: 2013
Contents originally published: 2012-13
Acquired: May 2013
Read: January 2026

Unfortunately the last installment, Escape, is probably the weakest Knight Errant story yet. In a very big way, this is down to the art: we still don't have one artist who can make it all the way through a storyline, and Marco Castiello's Kerra becomes a generic big-breasted female comic book character. (I note that back in the novel, Kerra specifically noted she was not well-endowed!) On top of that, Castiello shows little visual imagination: the hardware and soldiers he draws are largely straight out of the Clone Wars even though this story takes place a thousand years prior! (Colorist Michael Atiyeh does his best to disguise this, God bless him.)

I didn't find the story here very interesting, either; the idea of Kerra hunting down her missing family had merit, but it felt like there were too many coincidences and the story's optimism often felt unearned given some of the horrific events it depicts. I also feel like two arcs in a row delving into Kerra's backstory is too much: backstory is not character.

Overall, I would argue that Knight Errant was a victim of the release pattern Dark Horse adopted for its ongoings during the late EU. Though I'm sure there were good sales-related reasons for it, instead of releasing traditional monthly ongoings (as they had with KOTOR and Legacy), they instead alternated between different miniseries. Knight Errant isn't made up of fifteen issues, but rather Knight Errant  #1-5, Knight Errant: Deluge #1-5, and Knight Errant: Escape #1-5, with a six-month break in between each arc. (This model was also used for Dark Times, Invasion, and Agent of the Empire.) At the time I'm sure that resulted in a loss of storytelling momentum; that doesn't matter so much in retrospect, but I think the way it constrains the shape of the stories does. Miller's KOTOR had stories of one, two, three, four, six, and even twelve issues. This kind of flexibility, being able to move between intimate one-offs and massive epics, while incrementally moving forward all the time, is the real strength of the medium of the ongoing comic, and Knight Errant's straitjacket of five-issue stories keeps it from living up to the potential of its premise. Miller created a compelling world, but the series as published doesn't get to explore it enough.

Star Wars: Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller, Book 1

Star Wars: Knight Errant, Volume One: Aflame

Collection published: 2011
Contents originally published: 2010-11
Acquired: January 2013
Read: December 2025

Script: John Jackson Miller

Pencils: Federico Dallocchio, Ivan Rodriguez

Inks: Federico Dallocchio, Ivan Rodriguez, Belardino Brabo, Marcio Loezer
Colors: Michael Atiyeh

Letters: Michael Heisler

I was a big fan of John Jackson Miller's Knights of the Old Republic; in fact, I would say it is probably my single favorite ongoing Star Wars comic book. That took place four thousand years before the films and followed a disparate cast of characters thrown together by circumstance. (Still the best model for Star Wars story.) His later series, Knight Errant, takes place one thousand years before the films and has just a single lead, Kerra Holt. The story is set at a time where the Republic was on the retreat from the Sith; Kerra is a newly minted Jedi who crosses into Sith space on a daring raid and ends up stranded there, having to make her own way—and fight her own war.

I like the basic idea here, but the series never clicked with me like KOTOR did. At least part of that is due, I think, to Miller's artistic collaborators. This book has two primary artists, and neither is a Brian Ching or a Dustin Weaver. In particular, I think the book's open sequence really depends on the art, as it is action-packed and a key character moment, but I found the blocking of key sequences hard to work out and the character strands hard to follow.

Pivotally, I think the whole book depends on Kerra's emotional arc, that you need to see her as going too far in her desperation, and pulling back. Not that she's going to the Dark Side or anything, more than she's bitten off more than she can do, and she needs to focus on helping where she can, not overthrowing the system, which will just get her killed. But in this case I don't know if it's the writing or the art that fails to sell the vibe Miller is going for. You can tell what it's meant to be, but I don't think you really feel that there's a difference between the decisions she makes in the middle of the story and the ones she makes at the end. I think the middle of this story ought to feel like she's at her lowest point, but it doesn't really come across.

Doctor Who: Branches by Alex Paknadel, Rob Williams, I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos, and Luiz Campello

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 3: Branches

 

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017-18
Read: September 2021

Writers: Alex Paknadel & Rob Williams
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, JB Bastos & Luiz Campello
Colorists: Triona Farrell, Thiago Ribiero & Stefani Renne

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

The ninth and final volume of The Eleventh Doctor contains two linked stories. The first, by Alex Paknadel and I. N. J. Culbard, brings the Doctor, Alice, and the Sapling to a primitive planet where the Doctor was friends with its ruler—only the planet is highly industrialized and the Doctor doesn't remember the ruler. Paknadel's story is enjoyable, packed with great ideas, and Culbard's art is, as always, the best.

The second, by Paknadel, Rob Williams, and a host of artists, wraps up the ongoing Sapling storyline with the return of the forgotten silence. It has some great moments and good callbacks—I got chills at the return of an element from Alice's very first story way back in vol 1, and the way they defeat the villain was clever—but this title has set a very high bar for itself, and "Year Three" was not as strong as the first two years, and neither was its finale. The story didn't feel as personal to our protagonists, and the Sapling never really emerged as a character. Good stuff, and still the best of the Titan ongoings, but it seems best that it ended here.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Lost Dimension

Doctor Who: Roots by George Mann, James Peaty, I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Klebs Junior, Leandro Casco, et al.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling, Vol 2: Roots

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: September 2021

Writers: George Mann & James Peaty with Vince Pavey
Artists: I. N. J. Culbard, Ivan Rodriguez, Wellington Diaz, Klebs Junior & Leandro Casco with Pasquale Qualano
Colorists: Triona Farrell, Stefani Renne & Thiago Ribiero

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

Longtime readers of my reviews of Titan's Doctor Who comics will know that The Eleventh Doctor has consistently been my favorite of their three-then-four-then-three ongoings. For its first seven volumes, it was always written by Rob Williams and one other writer (Al Ewing for "Year One," Si Spurrier for "Year Two," Alex Paknadel for vol 1 of "Year Three"); they would typically cowrite the opening and closing story, and then alternate the stories in between, most of which were just one issue. I don't know how much collaboration there was, but they certainly seemed like a seamless whole, and the succession of done-in-ones allowed for a lot of variety. More than any other Titan ongoings, The Eleventh Doctor has felt like comics first and foremost, not a tv show on the comic page, much like the early years of Doctor Who Magazine's strip.

Year Three, alas, breaks the pattern. For the first time in the run of The Eleventh Doctor, we have a collected edition with no Rob Williams content, and this volume doesn't bring back Alex Paknadel from vol 1 of The Sapling, either. And to add insult to injury, the writer primarily used instead is George Mann. Now, Mann has gotten better than he was, even if he's not great, but I didn't find him very suited to the style of The Eleventh Doctor; neither is James Peaty, who handles the other of the four issues collected here. (There's also a four-page backup story by Vince Pavey.) Neither writer can get the short story down; in all of the examples collected here, the Doctor discovers a problem, and then defeats it right way, much too easily. Too long is spent on the build-up, keeping there from being an effective twist or turn at the climax; in Mann's "Fooled," for example, the Doctor just takes the villain's device and breaks it, and that's it; in Peaty's "Time of the Ood," things go similarly easy. Even when Mann has two issues, as in "The Memory Feast," we still have one-and-a-half issues of running around before we get to a quick resolution. (Overload the thingy, that good old Doctor Who standby.)

I also didn't find the engagement with the ongoing Sapling arc very satisfying. The Sapling himself is a blank slate of a character, the supposed memory crisis that the Doctor and Alice are experiencing doesn't really seem to make much of a practical difference, and though two of the three stories are about memory, they thematically are not up to much.

What does work is the art of I. N. J. Culbard. He's worked on two previous volumes of The Eleventh Doctor, but this is the first where he's made an impression on me, and it's a strong one; he draws three of the four issues here, and he has a somewhat Mike Mignolaesque style, even if it's all his own. Very atmospheric, pairs well with the coloring, and as The Eleventh Doctor does at its best, it feels like comics, not comics-as-tv (or tv-as-comics). I see that for the final volume he'll be back, and paired with Alex Paknadel, which should hopefully be an excellent combination.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: Free Comic Book Day 2017

Review: Doctor Who: Ghost Stories by George Mann, Ivan Rodriguez, Pasquale Qualano, and Dennis Calero

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016-17
Acquired: March 2020
Read: July 2021

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor: Ghost Stories

Writer: George Mann
Artists: Ivan Rodriguez, Pasquale Qualano & Dennis Calero
Colorist: Dijjo Lima
Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

I thought this was going to be something slightly different than it was. Spinning out of the 2016 Christmas special, "The Return of the Doctor Mysterio" (the first issue came out literally the day after it aired), this sends the twelfth Doctor on an adventure with that story's superhero, the Ghost, and his wife and daughter. I thought it was going to be the ongoing superhero adventures of the Ghost, with the Doctor as a minor character maybe. Instead, it's a pretty standard set of Doctor Who adventures, but with the Ghost and his family as companions. There's no New York City superheroics here; instead, there's visits to the future and alien planets and Sycorax spacecraft to track down some cosmic thingummies.

It's fine. I appreciated the focus on Grant's wife Lucy, who is the focal character much more than the Ghost, actually. But it's pretty bog-standard stuff, slightly enlivened by the novelty of having an entire family (including a daughter who is either eight or eleven) as a companion team.

But I feel like something funner could have been done. "The Return of Doctor Mysterio" was a pastiche of the Richard Donner Superman films, and it seems that a comic book version of the character could have been a superhero comic pastiche. I can imagine some fun stuff: give the Ghost a classic Siegel and Shuster social justice adventure, a wacky Mort Weisinger Silver Age tale, a John Byrne Man of Steel-era adventure, each with appropriate art. Heck, use the TARDIS to show him what he inspired in the 31st century for some Legion of Super-Heroes madness! I know damning a story for something for not doing something it didn't even aspire to do isn't the done thing in reviewing, but I really feel like this squandered the potential of a fun episode. As is often the case, Mann's Twelfth Doctor comics aren't as playful as the television run they are trying to emulate.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Eleventh Doctor: The Sapling: Growth

Review: Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen by Cavan Scott & George Mann, Ivan Rodriguez, Walter Geovanni, et al.

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2016
Acquired: September 2018
Read: May 2021

Doctor Who: Supremacy of the Cybermen

Writers: Cavan Scott & George Mann
Artists: Ivan Rodriguez & Walter Geovanni, with Alessandro Vitti & Tazio Bettin
Colorists: Nicola Righi with Erica Eren Angiolini

Letters: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

Event Teasers Art by Dan Boultwood, Andrew Pepoy & Jason Millet, Mike Collins, Blair Shedd, Simone De Meo & Arianna Florean, Stephen Byrne, Simon Myers, Lee Sullivan & Luis Guerrero, and Rachael Stott & Marcio Menys

Like Four Doctors the year before it, this crosses over all of Titan's ongoing comic series, which now includes the ninth Doctor in addition to the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth. It takes a very different structure, though; while Four Doctors had its three Doctors meet up by the end of the first issue and then treated them like a team, the four Doctors in Supremacy of the Cybermen never actually meet. Instead, each is involved in a parallel adventure of the Cybermen taking over the universe with Time Lord technology: the ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack battle them on the Powell Estate; the tenth Doctor, Gabby, and Cindy encounter them at war with the Sontarans; the eleventh Doctor and Alice discover them in the Silurian era; and the twelfth Doctor visits Gallifrey to discover the root of the problem.

The issue this causes is that since each Doctor gets a totally separate story, they in effect each get just one issue of story. Only that one issue of story is spread across five issues, making it feel like nothing is actually happening, because when you finish an issue, each Doctor has experienced just one-quarter of an issue of events. The end result is a five-issue collection where nothing happens: the ninth, tenth, and eleventh Doctors each have very simple battle with the Cybermen; the twelfth Doctor resets it all. The end. Even though it reads fast, I quickly came to dread reading it, so little did I enjoy it.

(Weird that when the Cybermen take over Gallifrey again in "Ascension of the Cybemen," the Doctor doesn't mention that she just went through this!)

from Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor #4
(art by Lee Sullivan)

Titan also did one-page preludes for the pre-ninth Doctors, showing what happened to each of them in the aberrant timeline where the Cybermen took over the universe. These set the stage for the main story... but for some reason the collected edition puts them all at the back! One of the cool things about reading in PDF is that I just moved them all to the front and read them first, as was clearly meant to be. They are fine, mostly noteworthy because Titan gets in some good artists for them, especially Mike Collins and Lee Sullivan.

I read an issue of Titan's Doctor Who comic every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: The Ninth Doctor: Official Secrets