– Spoiler Review –
Picking up a thread from The High Republic Adventures #3 – Phase III, the series takes a detour to focus on Alys “Crash” Ongwa and her team’s investigation into the Nihil culprit behind the attack on Corellia. The High Republic Adventures – Crash Landing is a funny yet emotionally deep issue with a few surprises which push the larger story forward and easily leave readers begging for more.
The main The High Republic Adventures – Phase III has been focused on Zeen Mrala’s quest to find her long lost love Jedi Knight Lula Talisola, and other Jedi lost after the fall of Starlight Beacon. These quests overlapped with Alys “Crash” Ongwa’s own, which is to identify the Nihil leader who brought chaos and destruction down on Corellia, her home planet. In the main series’ third issue, Crash visited Eriadu and spoke with Lula, showing her an image of the individual, which triggered her repressed memories of her final interaction together before losing her memories, though we never see if Lula tells Crash who he is or anything about him. The High Republic Adventures – Crash Landing picks up prior to Crash’s visit and what happens afterwards, which ends up having far reaching implications for the main series and overall story of the era as well. If you don’t know Crash, she was first introduced in The High Republic Adventures Annual and later starred in THRA writer’s Midnight Horizon novel for Phase I, running a security company on Corellia and eventually gets wrapped up trying to stop the Nihil’s plans against her planet. She reappeared in Tales of Light and Life in a short story (in an exclusive edition of the release), tracking down and eventually hiring on a Jedi turned rogue Ruu, written by Alyssa Wong, the inspiration for the character of Crash. You won’t need to know all this prior to reading Crash Landing, but if you haven’t at least met this crew in one of the prior stories, you’ll be a little left out as there isn’t much of a refresher, so some of the internal stuff Crash is dealing with might not click, as it initially didn’t for me either despite reading all the above, though I bet you’ll be eager to read more about this team afterwards. Either way, Crash Landing picks up sometime after the events of the short story, “Rogue Element,” as Crash and her team track down another Nihil in their city, getting a name to the face they’ll come to ask Lula and Zeen, as we saw in the main series’ issue #3, about on Eriadu: Krix Kamerat. That’s right, the little king of pricks himself, who we saw was at least alive in Lula’s flashbacks in issue #2, is indeed still a menace to society, though not in the way one would think, and someone doing this despite being behind the cell doors of a Republic prison. In a bit of an inverse of the main series, Crash and her team break into a Republic prison to talk to a Nihil prisoner, whereas Lula, Zeen, and other Jedi are breaking into a Nihil prison to get to Republic/Jedi prisoners; writer Daniel José Older is really into prison breaks right now! Wait…did I just say prison break and we’re talking about Krix he’s-such-a-jerk Kamerat?! Would Crash be crazy enough to break Krix out of prison? And why would she ever think it’s a good idea?!
Crash is still the molder of chaos in the case of good intentions, with whip-smart jokes and a testy attitude, but as the issue goes on, we see things have changed to some degree. She’s not against executions for the Nihil they capture or interrogate and as much as she hates Ovus Buckell and his plans, she’s still willing to work with him as she’s concerned a more Nihil-sympathetic person could take his place, as he was the Corellian Finance Minister who teamed up with the Nihil in Midnight Horizon to gain more power but was betrayed by them yet came out on top and is now the arch-premier of the planet. For her, Corellia is everything and saving it from the Nihil means helping save the Republic, because if they don’t, to her she thinks everything she and her team has sacrificed or fought for was for nothing. It’s in Crash’s girlfriend, Svi’no Atchapat, she finds comfort still, who frets over and worries over her, though every time we see inside Crash’s dreams, one must wonder if Svi’no will be enough. Though being enough might be exactly what’s worrying Crash, as her decisions, choices, and dreams point towards her attempting to bear the burden of Corellia’s woes on her shoulders, but it never quite seems good enough. And despite Svi’no wanting to live their lives or Crash telling her Krix is their final job until he isn’t, as the fight continues after what happens with Krix, as she sees an opportunity to stop the Nihil from ever harming her or anyone else ever again. But is it worth giving up her life over? Losing the people she cares about? The issue ends much like it started, in her dreams, though where she was happily looking at her past and enjoying Corellia then, now she can’t anymore and believes she isn’t worth it, at least as what I could tell from the circumstances, as she imagines being blown up instead of dealing with her sadness and guilt over sacrificing her life for the cause. It feels up to interpretation to some degree and readers won’t get any clarity yet…though Crash Landing ends with the tease there will be more to come in August, announcing The High Republic Adventures – Crash and Burn to follow-up on this story and its characters! I hope Crash and her team, especially Ruu, will get more than another off-shoot comic to tell more of their story, as there’s a lot to unpack and I felt like Crash Landing didn’t quite give it all the space/justice it could, especially against what we’ve gotten before in novels/short stories.
While Zeen Mrala and Lula Talisola don’t quite reveal anything about Krix, Zeen is eager to give them any help they need to go after him, which ends up being a map of the prison he’s in. It’s enough information for Crash to come up with a very Crash-like plan, where she and Ruu jump out of her ship IN SPACE and JETPACK DOWN TO THE GROUND! I love her casual attitude on the way down, while Ruu is very uncomfortable with the idea, yet it all goes smoothly enough, though was a fun idea to see play out. The real issue is when Crash finds Krix, as he seems to have had the inverse of what happened to Lula after the fall of Starlight Beacon. She forgot who she was and let fear rule her, hiding out as a warlord, Zeen’s message her only saving grace, but for Krix, he seems to have forgotten, on purpose, the extent of his crimes and has cooked up an absolutely delusional plan for redemption that ends with him and Zeen married and him the Chancellor of the Republic. Crash rightly calls out this insanity, but within it all she hears something she can use: he was once basically adopted by Marchion Ro and he’s willing to be a spy to kill the man. For her, it goes from the option to take out the Nihil who hurt Corellia, who in reality is a deranged young man with delusions of grandeur, to cutting the head off of the Nihil’s leadership, literally, with her own problems regarding the Nihil’s efforts enough to make her think it’s a good idea to use Krix to help take out Marchion Ro. Will they get close? She wants him to avoid Zeen but will they inevitably clash? How will Zeen/Lula feel once they learn what Crash has done? Hopefully we’ll start seeing where this all goes in the main THRA, but we know for sure we’ll see more in August’s The High Republic Adventures – Crash and Burn. Regardless, it was wild to see Krix, who feels betrayed by Marchion, to cook up such an idea and believe in it so thoroughly, but it’s also very much like him to ignore the feelings of others and believe, unequivocally, he’s in the right.
Joining the series for the first time is Rachele Aragno on art, while the usual suspects of colorist Michael Atiyeh and letterers Tyler Smith & Jimmy Betancourt remain. I’m new to her work and overall found plenty to enjoy, especially in the dream sequences, as the close-ups on Crash bring out a lot of emotion, hinting at how deeply this whole situation and her perceived part in it (not stopping it sooner) have really messed with her. It’s a dizzyingly bright intro to the issue, the colorful series of panels depicting Crash enjoying her life on Corellia under a large tree, which she views from a distance now, hinting at her disconnect from herself as she pursues the Nihil. The dream midway through no longer shows her past, just Crash alone, on the same lookout spot which she can see the tree from, but Aragno closes in on her face, the sadness apparent in her eyes and the bags underneath, the close-up adding to the sense of self-isolation. The same format plays out on the final page, a wide-view of Crash look at the tree, but the next is a close-up on her mouth, tears reaching down past her cheeks, the next panel she’s holding herself, turning away from her past, requesting something off-screen to take her out. I loved the thematic usage of this as the story goes on, Crash more alone as it reappears, as well as how it feels like such a stark change from the happier start of these dreams. The delusions Krix has, the little images of his grandiose plan, were cute and silly, my favorite being him standing over a dead Marchion Ro with fists raised in triumph, while the effect of placing those panels all behind him after he walks Crash through his plans, opacity way down on the delusions as he sits in the middle of it, smiling and sure of his plan’s success, serves to highlight how far gone from reality he lives. Smith and Betancourt do a lot for this scene, as his narration boxes are prominent, lined with heroic gold, to add self-importance to them, while his words summing it all up, as the previous images hang behind him, has word bubbles sitting directly over his head which allow the opaque visions to have precedence, to feel all encompassing in his thoughts and heart and in his own reality.
Here are a few other things:
- Ruu is a Padawan whom we first meet, and whose story we first learn, also in the “Rogue Element” short story. I liked how Older has the Nihil call him a “Nihil Jedi” as that was the nickname Crash gave him before they met and eventually came to work together, with big thanks to Svi’no. He also pushes forwards LGBTQIA+ representation, being the first trans man in the Saga, especially to have artwork of him too!
- Back to the main series we go, as issue #5 hits shelves April 24; issue #6 May 15; issue #7 on June 12; and issue #8 July 17. Subject to change, of course, but it’s what we know at the moment.
The High Republic Adventures – Crash Landing goes in some unexpected, yet intriguing directions, as Crash is won’t to do, but it feels like it needs more space to unpack all it wants to.
+ Crash, bringer and molder of chaos, surprises again
+ Krix’s new wacky groove
+ Art team playing up the delusions
– Feels like it doesn’t quite get across all what it wants about Crash’s emotional state
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Bluesky, Twitter @MynockManor, and Instagram @mynockmanor.
DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this book from the publisher at no charge in order to provide an early review. However, this did not affect the overall review content. All opinions are my own.
THE HIGH REPUBLIC ADVENTURES – PHASE III REVIEWS
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