Finally, here come my rankings for the "visual" Hugo categories, namely, the two Dramatic Presentation categories, and then Best Graphic Story or Comic. (Is it still called that? I feel like they changed the name.) Unlike most people I know, I am very good at keeping up with reading and very bad at keeping up with tv. So while I finished my Hugo reading three or four days before the deadline, and even had some time for non-Hugo reading throughout, I had to watch two movies and four episodes of tv during my last week, and I finished my last film at midnight the day before votes were due at noon.
(Get yourself a wife who, when you sleep until 11am, wakes you up and checks that you remembered to submit your Hugo ballot on time!)
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
[UNRANKED] The Wheel of Time 3x04: "The Road to the Spear", written by Rafe Lee Judkins, directed by Thomas Napper
Back in 2022, I watched a previous episode of this show when it was a finalist, and I accidentally watched the wrong one first, so I have been bored by this show twice already. I certainly wasn't about to subject myself to it a third time.
5. Murderbot 1x10: "The Perimeter", written by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, directed by Paul Weitz
Say what you will about The Murderbot Diaries, and I have, but the thing the books undoubtedly have going for them is the cynical narration, from a character who largely wants nothing to do with other people and their feelings. Strip that out, and you mostly get a bunch of schmaltz.
4. Murderbot 1x09: "All Systems Red", written by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, directed by Roseanne Liang
If an episode of a serialized show is a Hugo finalist, I typically don't watch the other episodes. You either wow me on your own, or you do not. I had a slight advantage coming into "All Systems Red," though, because I have read the first Murderbot book on which the first season is based. I thought this was decent but a bit broad; I was not very convinced by the actors playing all the humans. Some good jokes, but the occasionally sitcomesque tone was jarring.
3. Plur1bus 1x01: "We Is Us", written and directed by Vince Gilligan
This was a very well done first episode of a show with an interesting premise that I will probably never watch any more of. Works on its own in the sense that you can understand it just fine; doesn't work on its own in that it's all setting up interesting ideas, so what will be done with these interesting ideas is still to come. I thought the actress playing the main character was very good and there was some striking imagery. I wish a friend hadn't told me the premise at some point, because I think it would have been interesting to work it out while watching it. Much more involving than Murderbot.
2. Severance 2x10: "Cold Harbor", written by Dan Erickson, directed by Ben Stiller
This feels less like a nomination for this specific episode of Severance and more a nomination for the second season as a whole... and indeed, two years ago, the first season as a whole was a finalist. I don't know why that didn't happen again this year. I enjoyed the second season a lot, if not quite as much as the first—I love the premise and the leads, and there's lots of great character work and good twists, but my feeling is that some of the decisions made by the antagonists would fall apart under scrutiny. (Why can they hire whole marching bands but not, like, pay one guy to watch where Mark S. goes?) Still, I enjoyed the season finale a lot, which delves into some of the ethical implications of severance in a really interesting way... but the season ends on a cliffhanger, just like the last one did, so the pleasures of resolution are continually deferred, and that's a thing I just hate about contemporary television. Thus, even though I feel like this was probably better than Doctor Who in most senses, I am penalizing it.
(Interesting to note that three of the five tv shows are Apple ones. Are they the only interesting streaming service left at this point?)
1. Doctor Who 2x05: "The Story & the Engine", written by Inua Ellams, directed by Makalla McPherson
To me, the best episode of the second season of the largely mediocre Disney Plus Doctor Who revival was "Lux," where the Doctor and Belinda battle an evil cartoon. But this one, set almost entirely within a Nigerian barber's shop, about the power of stories, was probably second best. Not perfect, but bubbling over with ideas, and something you couldn't have done with any other Doctor. Not Doctor Who at its greatest, but largely more interesting to me than the stuff I've ranked below it.
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)
6. Frankenstein, directed and written by Guillermo del Toro
Look, maybe this is unfair, but I have more opinions about Frankenstein than probably most anyone you know, and this adaptation has largely uninteresting takes on a novel that I find intensely interesting. I was not a fan of reducing it all to Freudian family melodrama, especially its very unearned ending. I liked the earlier parts of the film better; the introduction of (essentially) Victorian Elon Musk was an interesting idea (though it doesn't really go anywhere in the end), and the bit where jaunty exciting music played while Victor was cutting up corpses was probably the best part of the entire film. If it had all been that clever and that striking, I would have ranked it much higher. Too many fight scenes; the gruesome violence of those got old fast.
(I could be wrong, but I think this is the first Frankenstein movie I have ever seen! Seems weird that that could be true after forty years, but I am pretty sure it is.)
5. KPop Demon Hunters; directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans; written by Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan, Maggie Kang, and Chris Appelhans
This movie has been watched in my household many times since it came out last summer, and the music has been played many times more. I am very familiar with all the music videos. But I had actually never seen the movie all the way through until I was forced to when it was announced as a Hugo finalist. It was cute enough. Not deep, but I did really like "What It Sounds Like," which I think is beautiful stuff. If it had only all been that good!
4. Sinners, directed and written by Ryan Coogler
I thought this was a well done vampire story with good period details. Surprisingly funny, which I had not expected from the somewhat earnest discourse around it. ("Maybe she ain't white" made me rewind to make sure I heard it right!) Some great moments overall, just not totally my kind of thing, so not as interesting to me as Andor but certainly more interesting than Demon Hunters. Anyway, anything from this point up strikes me as a totally worthy winner.
3. Andor Season Two, created by Tony Gilroy
In 2023, two episodes of Andor season one were finalists in Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), which didn't really work, as Andor is one of those shows where the whole season is one big story. Thankfully, this year, the entire season was a finalist in Long Form. I know everyone loves Andor, but having seen a whole season of it now, I find it a very frustrating show. I think it's very well shot, it has lots of great, interesting characters (bar, weirdly, Andor himself), and every now and again there's a beautiful moment that just hits it out of the park: Mon Mothma dancing at her daughter's funeral, Mon Mothma's speech, the Ghorman massacre, Kleya Marki's infiltration of the hospital. But this series is structured as four three-episode stories, and it was hard for me to shake the feeling that every single one of these could have been cut down to two episodes and the show wouldn't have lost a thing. Its cardinal sin is that too often it's just boring! So I am ranking it above KPop Demon Hunters (clearly it is doing interesting things) but below Superman (which was never boring).
2. Superman, directed and written by James Gunn
I wanted to see this last summer (it came out on my birthday, even!), but didn't mange to get around to it. Now, having finally seen it, I would say it's good but not great. Clearly conceived as an anti–Man of Steel (every time the film shows massive devastation, it carefully demonstrates both that the area has been evacuated and that Superman scoops up innocent bystanders), it leans into a lot of stuff I like about the character, and obviously was made by someone who—like me—thinks of the Donner movies and the comics of the 1980s and '90s as the "default" version of the DC universe. Given I recently reread all the JLI comics, I of course appreciated the Guy Gardner stuff, though I wish Metamorpho's personality was more like that iteration; as someone from Cincinnati, I of course appreciated the Hall of Justice. But I feel like it never quite grabbed me; I found the emotional conflict supposedly at the heart of the film kind of distant and unclear. But anyway, obviously more to my taste than Andor, but not as interesting to me as Mickey 17.
1. Mickey 17, directed and written by Bong Joon Ho
This movie is about a guy who can't die—or rather, can die as many times as his masters need him to do so—sent into space as expendable support on a colonization mission. The boss of the mission is a sort of combined Donald Trump/Elon Musk figure; the movie as a whole uses these ideas of immortality to think about who we consider expendable in lots of different concepts, but especially imperialism and capitalism. Lots of weird tonal shifts, which I always like, and good, if dark, jokes.
This is a webcomic that has been running since 2006; its third act concluded in 2025. (It's apparently not concluded yet, but the author's blog indicates Act 4 won't begin for a couple years.) Under the way the Hugo Awards handle serial narratives, that means the entire comic is eligible for the Hugo Awards as a unit. However, only the 2025 strips, which run sixty pages, are included in the Hugo voter packet. On the other hand, reading the comic since the beginning would mean reading over two thousand strips... and the art started out quite terrible! So I decided to read the comic from the beginning of Act 3, which started in 2020, and is a more manageable 469 pages, though I did skim some of the very early strips for context.
Anyway, that means it's not totally the comic's fault I was often lost, but there are a lot of characters with a lot of history to keep track of here. That I didn't mind too much... what I did mind is that the actual stakes of the act where amorphous and unclear. I don't know if that would have been better if I'd read the whole thing or what; there's apparently a big time gap between acts 2 and 3, and from context, I think a lot of what confused me was new to Act 3. The basic thing here is that 1) ghosts are real, 2) seeing them has something to do with a brain chip (but I wasn't sure what; I think the chip lets you see ghosts but I also think there were unchipped characters who could see ghosts?), 3) the government is going to give everyone brain chips in order to connect minds to create collective empathy (the two leads are the president and first lady), 4) but this means everyone will also know about ghosts, causing a national freakout, so 5) they must figure out how to get the one without the other, and 6) contend with the Catholic Church, which has its own opinions on what people know about the afterlife. What I didn't get is why the president and first lady were so keen to give everyone brain chips. If they couldn't figure out a way to give people collective empathy without giving everyone ghost knowledge, then why not... just hold off? All the characters acted like there was a deadline of when the "Middle Bridge Project" was due to launch, but surely the launch date was chosen by the characters? It was also very unclear to me what the Catholic Church was actually trying to do. Like, they wanted to be in on it in some way... but what were they actually trying to do and how was it bad? I never really knew.
So with the stakes so unclear, I was pretty much doomed to not enjoy this.
Back in the 2000s, I was a voracious consumer of webcomics, and this struck me as "quirky" in a way very much typical of the era. It would have fit very well among the kind of stuff I read back then! It reads like a weird throwback in the 2020s, however.
(The good thing that came out of me reading this is that it spurred me to get the same creators' graphic novel Sidequested out of the library for my seven-year-old, and they loved it so much they read it three times in one week and then asked me to read it too.)
5. The Power Fantasy, Volume One: The Superpowers, script by Kieron Gillen, art by Caspar Wijngaard
Kieron Gillen is one of those writers who gets on the ballot no matter what he writes at this point: since I started voting in the Hugo Awards, he has been a finalist every year since 2020 except for 2024. Gillen is a good writer... but surely not that good. The Power Fantasy is a case in point. I like to flippantly refer to him as "a poor man's Brian K. Vaughan," but Power Fantasy is actually a poor man's Alan Moore or Warren Ellis: in its depiction "what would it really be like for there to be people with superpowers on Earth?", it seems to do little we didn't see already in Miracleman or The Authority. (The super-fetus is very clearly Miracleman-derived!) It even seems to be derivative of Gillen's own work; the squabbling group of superpowered humans with complex histories is right out of The Wicked + The Divine. Of course, one of the most obnoxious things a critic can do is write something off by telling you it's like some other thing they've already read... but I found this offered little original within the medium or genre, and it definitely felt like one of those things that thinks it's being original.
But at least I (mostly) understood what was going on, so I ranked it above A Girl and Her Fed. Hopefully this series doesn't become a perennial finalist in this category like Gillen's Once & Future was.
4. The Space Cat, script by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford
As I said in my full review, I thought this was fun but slight. I don't know that it feels particularly award-worthy... but at least it wasn't derivative, so I ranked it above The Power Fantasy.
As noted in my full review linked above, I found this solid, well-done superhero comics... but nothing transcendent despite some of the hype it has received. Similarly, I thought Space Cat was a solid, well-done example of its genre. So they pretty much rank equally to me; I broke the tie because I'm just more into the genre that Absolute Wonder Woman belongs to than I am the genre that Space Cat belongs to.
2. A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel: Book One of Earthsea by Fred Fordham
In the oddball Hugo category that is "Best Graphic Story," one common type of finalist over the last five years is the graphic novel adaptation of an acclaimed prose work: see 2021's Parable of the Sower (which won) or 2023's Dune (though that's technically the comic of the movie of the book!) or 2024's The Three-Body Problem. I feel like the appearance of these kinds of finalists on the ballot say more about 1) the original prose work, and 2) the limited graphic novel reading of the Hugo electorate than anything else. That said, Fred Fordham's adaptation of the first Earthsea novel is clearly the best of these adaptations to ever appear on the ballot. Fordham's art is beautiful, and overall, this reads as a comic in a way that, say, Parable of the Sower did not, with the images doing the storytelling and very effective use of panelling in the storytelling. The magic still manages to feel magical, even though it's been moved out of Le Guin's beautiful prose into (arguably) the more straightforward visual medium. I did think some episodes became a little too abbreviated to follow, but overall this was very effective. (It's not totally fair to the book, though, but I do think my reading experience was diminished by the PDF provided in the voter packet rendering each two-page spread as a single page, which made the pages kind of small when read on my tablet.)
If you read my review linked above, you will see that I was highly skeptical about 1) a picture book being a finalist in this category, which has up to now entirely been comics (despite picture books technically qualifying), and 2) it being a picture book not created by people who normally do picture books (if you are a parent, you will know there is normally nothing worse). But this turned out not only to be pretty good, but to be the strongest finalist this year! I don't know that I would have thought so in a different year (I would have ranked it third in 2025 or 2024, for example), but this year the category was weak, and I think Invisible Parade clearly had the best storytelling of everything I read from a graphic standpoint: not in the quality of the images qua images, but in the way the images tell the story from page to page.
Overall Thoughts
I think that serialized streaming shows continue to be a point of difficulty for the Hugo Awards. Normally I'm loathe to propose adding categories, but I think Dramatic Presentation should be rejigged into three . I don't know what to call them, but duration-wise, they would be something like:
<60 mins.: for single episodes of tv shows (or other short things; like Dirty Computer from a few years ago); hopefully the nominators would concentrate on things that actually do work on their own
60-180 mins.: for films
>180 mins.: for entire seasons of streaming television programs; hopefully the nominators would concentrate on things that need their entireties to work, like Andor, Murderbot, and Severance
Right now, it's dumb that I have to judge "Cold Harbor" on its own when it clearly doesn't work on its own, but it's equally dumb that I'm comparing twelve hours of Andor to two hours of Mickey 17.
Overall, I thought both Dramatic Presentation categories just fine. I didn't love most of Short Form, but I appreciate that much of it is widely loved, so the category is presumably doing what it's meant to; as always, I am grateful to Long Form for introducing me to a couple interesting movies I probably never would have gotten around to otherwise (this year: Sinners and Mickey 17).
Best Graphic Story is the usual hodgepodge this year, but to be honest, it's probably been worse. A Girl and Her Fed was pretty bleh, but even that, I can appreciate the scale of the achievement. I suspect this category is still not really finding and rewarding the best of sf&f comics, but I also suspect it never will.
Collection published: 2002 Contents originally published: 2001-02 Acquired and previously read: ??? Reread: January 2026
Script: Darko Macan Pencils: Ramon F. Bachs Inks: Raul Fernandez Colors: Chris Blythe Letters: Steve Dutro
The Star Wars series Knight Errant, which I worked my way through earlier this year, is set during the timespan of the "New Sith Wars," a millennium of on-and-off conflict that came to an end a thousand years before The Phantom Menace. Reading Knight Errant made me think of what (I believe) is the only other piece of narrative Star Wars content to be set during this period, the 2001-02 comics miniseries Jedi vs Sith from Dark Horse—which I remembered as being really quite good, so I decided to give it a quick reread.
The title of the book is pretty cheesy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the title came first, if some enterprising editor didn't come up with "Jedi vs Sith" as highly marketable and then cast about for an appropriate time period to set such a book in. Similarly, the book itself is one of those continuity fix-up stories Star Wars tie-ins love to do: the Phantom Menace novelization established that a millennium earlier, a guy named Darth Bane established the Sith when everyone thought they were dead, and an earlier videogame (Jedi Knight, I think?) established that there had been a big battle where a bunch of Jedi and Sith had died, and what if those were the same thing? (See also The Shadows of Mindor, which has a similar genesis.)
You can't take another Jedi's lightsaber, kid! from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #2
The end result of these two factors could be quite bad, I imagine, but rereading it confirmed my belief that it is surely the best miniseries Dark Horse ever published during its time with the Star Wars license. (As opposed to the best ongoing, which was surely Knights of the Old Republic.) It's a very different Star Wars, but successful nonetheless. There are two parallel stories here: ones about three kids with Force talent who end up essentially drafted by the Jedi for a last stand on the planet Ruusan; the other is about the Sith Lord Darth Bane returning to his fellow Sith after a failed assassination attempt and watching as they all fall, forming his own new ideas about how the Sith should operate as he does.
Lord Farfalla: great Jedi or greatest Jedi? from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #4
The story about the kids is great. It's very dark; it's about the horrors of war, and the difference between being an idealized "great warrior" and the realities of being an actual soldier. There's lots of tragedy and I had forgotten how harsh it was. (I don't exactly know when I read it before, but it's not on my reading log, which begins in September 2003.) Darko Macan does an excellent job with the kids, making them sympathetic even as they make bad choices, and the ending especially is terrific.
No, don't tell him Rain! from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #6
The Darth Bane plotline is more of a subplot, but Bane is great, a droll unstoppable killing machine, yet smarter than everyone around him. You can see how we would get from the many Sith of the Knight Errant period and this comic to Bane concluding there must only ever be two Sith. (Darth Bane would later star in a trilogy of novels picking up from the end of this comic, but they were quite terrible.)
All Star Wars spaceships should be this awesome. from Star Wars: Jedi vs Sith #4
Ramon F. Bachs and Raul Fernandez do a great job on art. Some Star Wars comics set in time periods away from the films struggle to make the aesthetics distinct (this problem plagued Knight Errant, for example), but they give a mythological tone to the whole thing, with a Jedi lord who looks like a centaur and spaceships that look like sailing ships. I love Lord Farfalla; he's probably my favorite single-appearance Star Wars tie-in character. Bachs has a cartoony style that I feel like caused him to later be pigeonholed as a YA comics artist (the other work of his I've read is all from teen-focused comics: Legion of Super-Heroes, Monsters Unleashed!, Squirrel Girl & Ms. Marvel, Legends: Black Panther), but it's surprisingly good at evoking the horrors of war here. Overall, this is a great little package, underrated and undeservedly forgotten.
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.
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.
Scripts: Henry Gilroy & Stephen Melching, Justin Aclin Art: Vicenç Villagrasa & Vicente Ibañez, Ben Bates, Eduardo Ferrara Colors: Marlon Ilagan, Michael Atiyeh Lettering: Michael Heisler
With these three graphic novellas, I finally come to the end of my journey through all of the Clone Wars–related content of the old Star Wars "Expanded Universe." (Well, EU content that I care about; there were many more tie-ins I'm sure!)
Of these three, I found The Sith Hunters the least interesting. This is about a recently resurrected Darth Maul and his brother (who, even by standards of Star Wars villain names, is a bit obvious: was "Savage Oppress" ever going to work in logistics?) going on the run from both Jedi and Sith while Obi-Wan leads a Jedi task force to hunt him down. It seemed to be a fairly close sequel to a Clone Wars episode I hadn't seen, which isn't really the book's fault, but negatively impacted my enjoyment nonetheless. As result, the story doesn't really begin... but it also doesn't really end, either, I'm assuming because things had to be left open for if Maul ever reappeared in the tv show.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Defenders of the Lost Temple
A lot of these novellas will send a set of familiar Jedi characters on a mission (usually, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and someone from the movies) along with one original character. In theory, I appreciate the introduction of original characters... but the one in this story is plainly just Bruce Lee as a Jedi, and usually that's the issue with these original characters: there's so little to them it feels pointless.
Of these final three, Defenders of the Lost Temple was my favorite. No familiar characters in this one (at least protagonist-wise); it's about two Jedi and a squad of clones sent to secure an ancient artifact. Justin Aclin's story has some nice beats, with a strong character focus, as the story's padawan befriends a dopey clone who thinks he might have the Force in him. Decent art from Ben Bates, a bit more expressive than is the norm for this series.
It does suffer a bit from being clone-focused: four identical characters in identical outfits are a tough thing to pull off in comics, and I sometimes lost track of which one was which. But this is the kind of one-off action-focused story this series excels at at its best.
The Smuggler's Code is somewhere in between the two, quality-wise. Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka are on a beach vacation when Obi-Wan notices a criminal who eluded his grasp years ago. He won't let Anakin and Ahsoka help, but ends up gaining the assistance of a suspicious smuggler.
It's basically fine. There's little to do with the "Clone Wars" here, but the story is competent enough, though a bit predictable. I didn't care much for the art style; I do think the 3D The Clone Wars show had a much less comics-friendly art style than the 2D Clone Wars show, but I also think Eduardo Ferrara hasn't really made it work. Too jagged.
All in all, this is a fun enough series, if not as good as the Clone Wars Adventures series it supplanted. They work well enough on their own; I will probably give them to my kid to read during the gap between Episodes II and III as we make our way through the Star Wars saga.
In the waning days of the old Star Wars EU, they experimented with more cross-fertilization between Dark Horse's comics and Del Rey's novels, with series that would cross back and forth between them. One example of this was the Knight Errant series, where the story begins in the comics, then goes into a novel, and then returns to the comics. (Somewhat confusingly, the novel is just called "Knight Errant" with no subtitle, and also confusingly this mean the comic collection branded "volume two" is actually the third Knight Errant book.)
The novel picks up a bit after the end of the first trade paperback, with Kerra trapped in Sith space, still doing her best to cause problems.
Different media obviously have different strengths. Two of the benefits of a novel over a comic are worldbuilding and interiority. Though obviously comics can handle these in their own way, I think it's probably easier to work in a little touches in a novel; also given this novel is almost 400 pages but the Knight Errant trades are just 100, Miller has a much bigger canvas here. That to me was the real triumph of the novel: I can't think of any Star Wars story that's ever really shown us what it would be like to live under the Sith, what a realm under Sith thrall would actually be like. (Technically, the Empire was such a thing, but Darth Sidious kept this secret from his Empire.) Miller's novel carries us through several different kingdoms within the Sith empire, each with its own ruler with their own ethos. There's the Sith who believes no one exists but him, the Sith who believes no one deserves to exist, the Sith who directly controls their entire kingdom, and so on. I thought this stuff was fascinating and all very well done. It does what a good tie-in story should do, giving us a previously unseen angle on a familiar universe.
We also get a mercenary who operates in Sith space; I liked this guy a lot. He's an interesting character and he shows a new angle on Sith dominance. It seems a real shame he didn't pop up more in future Knight Errant installments.
On the other hand, I found the characterization of Kerra a bit of a squandered opportunity. Kerra is very much a character who is always on the move, and not given to introspection very much. This works to the strengths of the comics medium to an extent, but does leave me feeling like we mostly know Kerra at a bit of a remove. I do think lots of introspection wouldn't have felt right for her, but I also think the medium of a novel provided more opportunities for developing her as a character than we got. Specifically, Kerra befriends a young woman on one of the Sith worlds; she helps liberate this girl and some other Sith thralls, but then struggles to find a place of safety for them. Unfortunately, this friend character feels more like a plot point than a person. Kerra does a lot of stuff to help her, but rarely actually interacts with her or even thinks about her. I think this was a real missed opportunity; if Kerra is not inclined to reveal herself voluntarily, seeing her build a relationship with a young protegee could have done a lot to develop her.
Like a lot of Miller books, I did find that in the last quarter or so it felt like, despite the presence of fast-paced action, the book was treading water. I don't know if I could exactly put my thumb on what causes this, but I felt similarly when reading Rogue Elements and The High Country.
Despite all this, I enjoyed the novel as a whole. Overall, I found Knight Errant a mixed bag as a series (more on that when I get to the last two comics), and this was probably the best it was in execution.
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.
Scripts: Mike W. Barr, Ryder Windham, Jeremy Barlow
Art: The Fillbach Brothers, Ben Dewey, Brian Koschak Colors: Raymund Lee, Mae Hao with Marlon Ilagan
Lettering: Michael Heisler
I used to be a big fan of Dark Horse's Clone Wars Adventures series, which were digest-sized comics containing three or four stories in the style of the 2-D Clone Wars cartoon. A lot of people must have been, because while the show ended in Marsh 2005, the comics lasted all the way until December 2007; in fact, four of its ten volumes came out after the show was over! But the comics did finally come to an end. Once the 3-D The Clone Wars began, Dark Horse replaced them with a series of graphic novellas (some original stories, some reprints of stories originally released serially). These were still digest-sized, but each volume told a single 75-page story, in the style of the new show. Even though I didn't really watch the new show, I liked Clone Wars Adventures enough that I kept collecting these; the last six, however, I never got around to reading until now.
One of my reasons for loving Clone Wars Adventures was the art of the Fillbach Brothers, who I think are cartoonists par excellence; their work on the series was kinetic and delightful. Unfortunately, their style I think suffers a bit when forced to conform to the style of the 3-D cartoon, which is in the case in The Suncrasher Trap, a story of Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka, and company trying to stop a Separatist superweapon. It's basically fine; as a big fan of DC in the 1980s, I was glad to see Mike W. Barr on scripting duties (I had no idea he was still writing comics!) but it's a bit staid. I think the flat coloring of the 2-D series suits the Fillbachs' art style much more than the shaded coloring attempting to mimic the 3-D series. (In some later novellas, the artists don't seem to have to conform to the show's art style as much; I wish that had been true here.)
Of the six volumes I read across January and February, Strange Allies, scripted by Ryder Windham with art by Ben Dewey, is by far the worst. It focuses on a young Chiss Jedi with a group of loyal clone soldiers and a friend who is a burly swoop bike racer; the story tries to simultaneously tell us he's inexperienced and he's been on all these different adventures. The plot jumps around a lot, like the writer made it up as they went along, and there are threads that don't go anywhere. Only once I finished it did I discover that the main characters originate in a series of YA Clone Wars tie-in novels, which I guess explains some of my issues, but while this may work for someone who has read those stories it didn't work for me.
Lastly, there's The Enemy Within, by Star Wars comics stalwart Jeremy Barlow with Brian Koschak on art. This story has no Jedi in it; it focuses on a platoon of clone soldiers on a secret mission. I enjoyed the writing on this one a lot; unlike many of these novellas, which seem content to deliver a frothy action story, Barlow gives us a story of character and complications. It is slightly let down by the art; Koschak does well with action but struggles to draw convincing faces, which is a definitely downside in a story that not only needs to convey a lot of characterization via facial expressions, but needs to differentiate a bunch of characters who have the same face!
The last two novels of the five adult-audience tie-ins to The Clone Wars tv show form a duology, Clone Wars Gambit by Karen Miller: Stealth and Siege. Like with the third book, I was struck by how these seemingly try to play down their connection to the kid-audience show. The front covers depict Obi-Wan and Anakin as they appear in the live-action movies, not in the cartoon; the back covers use just images of CGI droids and spaceships which would look the same in either incarnation. The covers don't even use the tv show "The Clone Wars" logo!
Star Wars: Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth by Karen Miller
And like with the third book, the whole vibe of these doesn't fit with what I know of the show. (Admittedly, I have seen very little of it, but I have read all of the Dark Horse tie-in comics.) The premise of these two books is that the Jedi hear that the Separatists are creating a superweapon, a deadly virus. With few ships or people to spare, Obi-Wan and Anakin must infiltrate the planet where the weapon is being developed, and try to rescue or capture the developed, and ultimately, last long enough to be rescued.
As a plot goes, it's probably like a lot of other Clone Wars–era stories, but I very much enjoyed it for how the story was told. It's funny, because my memory of Miller's other The Clone Wars book, Wild Space, is that it was slow and tedious, but I found this book thoughtful and engaging. It's deliberate in its pacing, but Miller's very good at finding interesting character moments across the two books. She does very well in particular by the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin, these two men who are emotionally brothers—with all the weight that that carries. Anakin wants to live up to Obi-Wan's ambitions for him, but is also frustrated by Obi-Wan's somewhat constrained idea of what a Jedi can be. Obi-Wan wants his apprentice to succeed and is impressed by his abilities, but also worries about him. I was particularly impressed by the way Miller took a small moment from The Phantom Menace and revealed what kind of emotional impact it had on Anakin.
The book is also filled with lots of moments about the difficulties and compromises of war, which is exactly the kind of thing that I enjoy in my Clone Wars–era stories. A lot of other Star Wars wars are straightforward good-vs.-evil fights, but what makes the Clone Wars interesting is the compromised position the Jedi are put in by fighting in them, and I prefer Clone Wars stories to delve into that when possible. In a lot of ways, big and small, Miller explores how tough these fights are for Obi-Wan and Anakin from a moral perspective. I really liked the segments in the second book in particular, where they must defend a small community from Separatist attack, but struggle with the fact that this community would not be in danger except for them, and that they might be using these people... particularly a young girl with nascent Force skills who takes a shine to Obi-Wan.
Star Wars: Clone Wars Gambit: Siege by Karen Miller
There's a review of my Star Trek novel on Goodreads that says in part, "people got hurt a lot. I unironically love reading about people getting hurt." I couldn't help but think about that review a lot while reading Gambit, where there is a lot of emphasis on how hurt Obi-Wan and Anakin get; clearly, Miller is writing for that kind of reader. Even the Separatist scientist the Jedi must rescue gets her injuries lovingly detailed. (The Neimoidian torturing her is a character from the show, but I somehow doubt he was this gruesome there!)
Other notes:
On one hand, we get a Melida/Daan reference; as an old-school Jedi Apprentice stan, I was delighted to see it. On the other hand, the book introduces a different female Jedi with whom Obi-Wan had a fling in his youth. Whither Siri Tachi? Actually, I liked this new character a lot; there's a very well done subplot about her and Ahsoka.
I did think it was funny to realize that every time Darth Sidious goes to call Count Dooku, he has to throw a decrepit robe over his Palpatine outfit. Like, Dooku knows who Sidious really is, right? Why must Sidious do this? It's very goofy to visualize that between committee meetings, Palpatine is putting on this robe everytime he makes a holo call to a minion.
So, overall, I really enjoyed these books. Obviously, I read a lot of tie-in fiction, and fundamentally what I want out of it is something that fits with what happened on screen, something that captures its vibe... but also manages to do something the screen material did not do, otherwise what's the point? Like Traviss in No Prisoners before her, Miller precisely hits that target here.
Unfortunately, Scourge is a lot like Shadow Games in that the execution is not very good. I like the idea of a Jedi librarian forced into action by the death of his apprentice, but the occasional moment aside, I didn't find him a very distinctive character. On top of this, I often found author Jeff Grubb's dialogue awkward. I could see what the book was going for, a group of disparate people who have to work together is the original Star Wars trope, but if your dialogue doesn't work, then the character interactions you need to make this trope function just don't come off.
The book is supposedly set in the late Bantam, pre–New Jedi Order era, but though I'm sure you could always squint and things would be fine, I didn't think the details rang true, and I'm not sure why it wasn't just set in the prequel era. It felt more in line with that era's Jedi than Luke's.
The official Clone Wars webcomic continued to run through the end of the show's third season. While the installments for the first season were one-off prequels to episodes, the installments for the later seasons told a multi-part story in fifteen installments, set in parallel to the events of the show. Frustratingly, the webcomics from these seasons have never been collected even though they read much better on their own! Thankfully, though, they're still out there if you know where to look, and after finishing the season one webcomic collection, I went on to the later seasons.
The story for season two is Act on Instinct. Its main character is Tyzen Xebec, a Jedi padawan whose master is killed; Tyzen is assigned to a new Jedi master, Keelvine Reus. The other key characters are Ganch, the clone who commands the squad assigned to Tyzen, and Sanya, a member of the Jedi Agricultural Corps. (Various tv characters pop up here and there; Ahsoka tries to console a grieving Tyzen, for example.) Keelyvine and Tyzen are sent to defend the planet Ukio from the Separatists. Shenanigans of course ensue.
The story is fine. It's mostly action-focused; a character arc suggested at the beginning, about Tyzen and Keelyvine learning to adjust to one another, largely doesn't play out, since the two characters are separated for most of the Battle of Ukio. There's a lot of Star Wars goofiness, but it's decently well done. The story is definitely harmed, though, by the very variable art. It's jarring to have the art style change every five pages or so, but even worse is that some of the four artists are very much better than others. I think Thomas Hodges is most consistent. Some of the others' work frankly comes across as amateur hour.
The third season story is The Valsedian Operation. Thankfully, the art is all by Tom Hodges this time; thankfully also, the story keeps Keelyvine and Tyzen together. The master and padawan work together with Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka to investigate a Separatist intrusion in Hutt space; meanwhile, Sanya is on Coruscant with Ganch, looking into sabotage. Unfortunately, the Hutt plotline isn't very interesting and I wish there was more stuff between Keelyvine and Tyzen again. The stuff with Sanya is more interesting, letting us see a different side to the clone army, though I wish it had been fleshed out more; the "Republic Service Organization" comes across as just "the USO... but in space!", not a thought-through organization in its own right.
That said, Keelyvine Reus is a great character in the Boba Fett mold: less about anything she actually says or does, and more just great visual design. Dig that coordinated green tunic, green lipstick, and green eyeshadow! It's too bad these two stories are her only appearances, I would have liked to have seen more of her.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Act on Instinct originally appeared on StarWars.com in fifteen chapters (30 Sept. 2009–7 May 2010). The story was written by Pablo Hidalgo; illustrated by Thomas Hodges, Grant Gould, Jeff Carlisle, and Daniel Falconer; and lettered by Grant Gould.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Valsedian Operation originally appeared on StarWars.com in fifteen chapters (14 Sept. 2010–29 Apr. 2011). The story and art were by Thomas Hodges, with scripts by Pablo Hidalgo and colors and letters by Grant Gould.
6. A Girl and Her Fed, scripts by K. B. Spangler, art by Ale Presser
4. The Space Cat, script by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford
