– Spoiler Review –
Keeve Trennis can’t ever catch a break, can she?! The High Republic #7 is an emotional and frightening issue which doesn’t shy away from the fallout from Keeve’s drastic actions to track down the Great Progenitor of the Drengir.
The issue attempts to disorientate you like Keeve Trennis currently is, lost in a strange environment and seeing faces from the past, and it succeeds, especially thanks to the ghostly visage of an alien woman and a red lightsaber swinging out of the darkness. The spooky ghostly woman seems primed with advice, but the Sith wielding the lightsaber challenges Keeve and she falls to his blade, frozen as he binds her in place forever. She awakes on Starlight Beacon from a deep meditation in a sweat, the resident Jedi physician calling out her anomalous vitals, which she ignores and bugs Maru for something, anything to do. Last issue, Keeve dove into Sskeer’s connection to the Drengir to find the root of all Drengir, the Great Progenitor, but the physic connection works both ways, as the Progenitor is infecting her meditation, hence the Sith Lord conjured to slash at her mind. Before she used Sskeer’s connection, Keeve ruminated on the revelation her Master’s connection to the Force is weakening, worried that if it can happen to him, it can happen to any Jedi, the unsaid part including her on the list. In The High Republic #7 the unsaid part festers, taking over her composure and messing with her connection to the Force, as what should be a simple fight against some small time Nihil on a routine mission goes wrong, Keeve’s doubts bubbling over and her rescue failing, until the spooky ghost woman who’s actually Jedi Wayseeker Orla Jareni (first seen in Into the Dark) helps her stop the Nihil. Orla doesn’t mince words and pushes Keeve immediately, knowing a Jedi in distress from the inside when she sees one (like her friend Cohmac Vitus has been during all their time together). The first step of getting over anything always is admitting the problem, which Keeve did the opposite of by running off to stay busy so she doesn’t have to think about what’s happening to her and what she’s afraid of, though thanks to Orla’s pushing, Keeve finally says the unsaid part out loud, admitting to Orla, and to herself, how worried she is for herself confronting darkness like the Progenitor if her Master couldn’t even handle it. Seriously, I can’t tell you how amazing it is to watch Keeve’s journey through this comic so far, always struggling but finding a way to come back, allowed to talk about feelings she’s having or her Master is, finding a better way to carry on, instead of having to hide it forever; This emotional journey tells us all the ways these Jedi are different than those of the prequel era and makes for even more relatable and enduring characters, as Keeve ties with Vernestra Rwoh with my favorite Jedi of the era so far. Holding onto such emotional turmoil is always a terrible idea, which the Saga showed us with Anakin, but that took years to mess with him because the Jedi were already pushing for holding stuff in, whereas this era they are far more open to discussing emotional parts of a Jedi’s life, so to hold it in brings Keeve great pain so quickly. It also doesn’t help the Progenitor has access to Keeve now, the connection allowing it to mess with her further, showing the young Jedi Knight a ghastly image of Avar Kriss, consumed by Drengir vines, with all that’s left of her is a skeleton and her signature forehead jewel.
It’s an alarming and arresting image, brought to dastardly life by the art team of Georges Jeanty, Karl Story, Annalisa Leoni, and Ariana Maher, and it only reinforces Keeve’s doubts, because if her Master and now the legendary Avar Kriss couldn’t stand up to the Great Progenitor and the Drengir, how can she have any hope left? For those reading, it reinforces Keeve’s doubts to us, as we know Kriss’ abilities are nothing to sneeze at so if she’s already lost, truly how can Keeve, especially in this state, ever stand a chance? It makes the Drengir feel even more powerful and an even larger threat, the task of defeating them slipping further and further away. It’s a classic dark side move, dig into their enemy’s fears and exploit them, but with Orla at her side, and maybe a quick chat with Sskeer remotely, I feel like Keeve can make her way back from this edge. As for the death of Avar Kriss? Considering the book Out of the Shadows released a day before the issue but takes place months after The Rising Storm (which this takes place prior to), I’ll just say make sure to read the exceptional new book (and TRS too, if you haven’t)!
So what was with that Sith Lord, hey? That’s Darth Krall, fallen Jedi Master, who quelled the Nightmare Conjunction a very long time ago, and I feel like we get a hint here what exactly that Nightmare Conjunction was: the sealing of the Drengir on the Amaxine station! Those golden statues looming over the frozen Keeve and the Drengir are the four idols the Jedi who stumbled into the Amaxine station uncovered, as seen in Into the Dark, and decided to mess with, unleashing the Drengir hoard on the galaxy. Only a week prior to this issue’s release did we first see the statues depicted thanks to the Galactic Data File in IDW’s The High Republic Adventures, in a neat bit of synergy (technically we saw them in Sskeer’s vision/flashbacks, but not in as much detail/they were an exaggeration). Either way, is Krall that bad of a Sith if he sealed away the Drengir? Or is the reality the Drengir are just that dangerous and terrible themselves, enough that the Sith even wanted to rid the galaxy of them? Sskeer’s connection seemed to tell us even the Sith couldn’t handle working with them, so the latter is far more likely than Krall being a good guy in any sense of the word. As for why the Great Progenitor is showing Keeve these things, that’s a whole different sabacc game! Is it trying to show her why they’ve come back with such vengeance, with such fury, due to what they feel was unjust imprisonment? Is there an alternative to killing the Drengir, like sealing them away again, that the Jedi need to consider, least they lose themselves to some degree because no matter how terrible the Drengir are, they are still alive and therefore a part of the Force? Through Sskeer, Keeve has found non-violent ways to push back the Drengir, so if there’s any Jedi I trust to see the alternative method, once she’s out of her funk of course, it’s Jedi Knight Trennis. Jareni’s Wayseeker’s status, where she follows the Force only instead of any Jedi Order commands (explained quickly and neatly via the dialogue from Cavan Scott here), is also probably one of the best Jedi to have at Trennis’ side, as she can show her how better to listen to the Force, as I’m sure a certain maybe dead maybe not Jedi Master might be too focused on her objective that she’s missing part of the song the Force is singing about dealing with the Drengir. So many delicious layers by Scott in this series, pulling you deeper into its story and characters and making the wait between issues difficult.
Helping that mastermind with his devious plans are the art team, currently with Georges Jeanty on pencils, Karl Story on inks, Annalisa Leoni on colors, and Ariana Maher providing lettering. The way they drew the vision sequence drives home Keeve’s disorientation, with the sudden appearances of characters like Kanrii, Bartol, and Julus, or Orla’s even more sudden disappearances, with Jeanty and Story etching palpable worry and confusion on Keeve’s face as the events around her get weirder and weirder. I also loved Leoni’s colors in this section, starting with a calming blue, despite the situation, but then Krall’s red slashes in, deepening and taking over as Keeve stumbles through the vision and ‘loses’ to Krall aka her fears. As Orla pushes Keeve to see the truth, the doubts are her own and the Force believes otherwise, the emotional turmoil rolling across Keeve’s face is some of the best of the issue, with the big tear cascading down as she realizes the truth of Orla’s words, to the loud, shouting face as her doubts still cause her to reject what Orla’s saying afterwards. Maher’s lettering has always had a dynamic quality to it, accentuating actions and adding emphasis when it really matters, which all of her SFX do here, like the broken ‘crkk’ when Keeve slams a wall or the ‘whrr’ showing the power of the fans sucking away the Nihil’s deadly toxins. I also loved how she messed around with the word bubbles a little bit during the opening vision, as she pulls the Drengir bubble type, black with quotations around its edges, to hammer home the odd Drengir-ness of what Keeve finds herself surprisingly saying. My favorite panel contains Keeve twirling her double-bladed lightsaber and swearing, which is so Keeve it’s not even funny…but it is a funny and a cool moment, especially since its POV is basically that of the Nihil, their guns poking through at the edges of the panel. I also really liked the look of the little furry Chortose, making me kind of want to hug them even though I know it would be disrespectful; I guess the species had a small presence in Legends but of course Scott’s the master of pulling from the past so it shouldn’t have been surprising. And lastly, that chilling look at Avar Kriss consumed by the Drengir, all that’s recognizably left of her being the jewel on her forehead and a few locks of hair…you all know what you did!
Here are a few other things:
- Have you been enjoying Keeve’s tendency to swear as much as I have? Over on Twitter, Ben (@ZenKenobi) certainly has, as he’s been keeping track of her chosen swears with a handy chart and I love this so much. I’m not surprised in the slightest “kriff” is in the lead so far.
- Adminstrator Jahen of Starlight Beacon, who hands Maru the alert he presents Keeve to attempt attending to, is appears in two of the short stories included with Star Wars Insider!
- We have a page dedicated to The High Republic, which is where you’ll find all our reviews, news articles, and a list of what content is yet to come! Just last week at SDCC we learned about the end of Phase 1, thanks to Wave III arriving in January 2022!
The High Republic #7 doesn’t shy away from Keeve’s internal battles and is all the better as a series for it.
+ Keeve’s emotional turmoil
+ Disorientating opening
+ Art team complicit in Scott’s crimes
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.
THE HIGH REPUBLIC COMIC REVIEWS:
There Is No Fear: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 — Heart of the Drengir: #6