The Legend of Korra: Patterns in Time |
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Collection published: 2022 Contents originally published: 2016-22 Read: January 2026 |
Illustrated by Heather Campbell, Sam Beck, Blue Delliquanti, Jayd Aït-Kaci, Jen Xu & K. Rhodes, Victoria Ying, Alexandria Monik*
Colored by Killian Ng, Sam Beck, Lynette Wong, Alexandria Monik
Lettered by Michael Heisler, Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt, Blue Delliquanti, Nate Piekos, Jen Xu & K. Rhodes
When my family watched The Last Airbender, my continuity-oriented seven-year-old interspersed the episodes of the show with the relevant comics. When the family moved onto The Legend of Korra, I realized we had never actually picked up the collection of during-the-show comics! So I bought it for my kid, and then eventually got around to reading it myself.
I was surprised that there are so many fewer Korra comics than Last Airbender ones. I mean, I know ultimately Last Airbender was the more popular show, but surely going into the series, no one would have known that and they would have wanted to maximize the number of tie-ins produced? (Note that, by way of comparison, Korra got an artbook for each season while Last Airbender just got one for the whole show.) But there are only eight stories collected here, and some are very short—one is only two pages!
Anyway, nothing here is a work of genius, but it's fun enough. The similar Last Airbender collections very much benefit from the fact that Last Airbender has a better ensemble, and the comics capture their interactions very well. On the other hand, not only does Korra have a weaker ensemble, but some of its members are totally unrepresented here: there are no stories including Mako or Bolin! A number of the stories are prequels: we get two featuring young Korra, one with young Asami, one about an ancient airbender mentioned in the show, and a story where Tenzin tells his kids about his youth. Of these, my favorite was definitely the Tenzin prequel ("Clearing the Air" by Kiki Hughes and Sam Beck)... but then, Tenzin is probably my favorite Korra character! The two-page one, "Wisdom" by Blue Delliquanti, is actually very well done, good mystical vibe. The ones where they are kids are fine; my favorite of these was the Asami one ("Skyscrapers" by Rachel Silverstein and Sam Beck), since I don't remember learning much about her parents on the show.
Of the others, set during the timeframe of the show, my favorite was the one where Korra sends Meelo on a mission to find some lost pets, called, well, "Lost Pets" (by show co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino, with Jayd Aït-Kaci). Meelo can easily be a mere comic relief character, so it's nice to see him get some genuine character stuff.
Overall, this isn't as strong as the similar Last Airbender collections (nothing here approaches the comic heights of Sokka pretending to be a Fire Nation recruit) but it's a decent and quick read.
* The collection's title page also lists Michelle Wong, who illustrated the Korra comic Ruins of the Empire, but I can't figure out why, because she's not credited on any of the individual stories.
