– Spoiler Review –
Count Cavan Scott is back to frighten Star Wars fans once again with his latest spooktacular series, Tales from the Nightlands, which introduces the frightening Nightlander! With a chilling, fun, and intriguing script, paired with Soo Lee’s ghoulishly good art, part one of the three part series is a fantastic start that will leave fans eager for more frights.
Whether it’s Vader’s Castle on Mustafar or the Death Star itself, Cavan Scott has brought plenty of all-ages spooky fun to Star Wars comics for seven years now. While previous series have all shared a similar conceit, where we follow a framing story and the characters within reveal scary tales, Tales from the Nightlands switches up the formula to fantastic effect, as it’s no longer tales someone is sharing, but the scary stuff is what’s actually, truly happening within the issue! This format means stories won’t be as outlandish as a kaiju-sized Jaxxon and Chewbacca battling or undead battle droids, though it’s no less frightening what Scott and team have cooked up for this series and I appreciated the change of pace, as it adds some stakes to the scares and gives the main story more room to grow and develop. In the case of Tales from the Nightlands #1, which is set sometime between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, a young Padawan Anakin Skywalker and his Master Obi-Wan Kenobi travel to Ryloth as emissaries of the Republic to honor the passing of the head of the Twi’lek first family. The granddaughter Daesha, who was unable to say goodbye, wants to try and commune with the dead thanks to some arcane research her grandfather did before his passing, and while she’s told not to follow through, Anakin offers to help, though the pair unwittingly unleash the Nightlander. This frightening specter, dreamed up by famed Star Wars artist Iain McCaig, is ruler of the Nightlands, a place ghosts tell our heroes is a domain of demons and misery, and she wants to find her way back to the living. Artist Soo Lee and the lettering team of Comicraft’s Tyler Smith & Jimmy Betancourt (Dark Horse’s Star Wars regulars!) bring out all the stops to make the Nightlander’s debut a memorable and fittingly scary one, and while the heroes manage to push her back for now, it’s said she’ll have her chance again in 30 years, which is when Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa will find themselves dealing with her in issue #2 (and then Rey and Finn in the final issue). Issue #1 has no troubles establishing the Nightlander as an intimidating presence and something worthy to stand up against our heroes, especially with Scott’s taunting final lines here, and I’d argue she should be right up there with Star Wars heavy-weight villains already, so if the next two issues can match the intensity and keep her a credible threat, I won’t sound as crazy!
While this is a fun story about a very spooky threat, Scott weaves in themes of loss and explores Anakin Skywalker, and Obi-Wan to some extent, in the process, and it felt like this was all possible due to the longer nature of the story and new format. With Anakin, it’s played rather straight until near the very end, the gallant young Jedi who just wants to help people like he imagined he’d get to, but the Nightlander uncovers his ulterior motive for helping Daesha: the belief he’ll get a chance to speak to Qui-Gon Jinn. Obi-Wan and Anakin have a good relationship in this issue, but given the younger Jedi’s desire to be out adventuring and the older Jedi’s more rigid structure, the disconnect between the two remains clear, and having the chance offered to him to maybe talk to lost spirits spirits, the Jedi Master who believed in him and was far less rigid, isn’t all too surprising and another hint at how he’s always had trouble letting go. Obi-Wan stands at Anakin’s side to help fight against the Nightlander, despite Anakin not listening to him having led to this mess, and at one point Anakin offers himself up over Daesha to emulate the Master he lost, showing Qui-Gon’s legacy lives on in more important ways than being able to talk to him, yet because they save the day, for now, they miss the implications and don’t dwell on Anakin’s inability to let go.
I hope we’ll get to see more about the Twi’leks and their culture in the future issues and I wonder if Daesha will be involved in some way, given she’s young enough now she could still be alive all the way until the sequel trilogy era, as it could lead to an interesting through-line beyond just the nefarious Nightlander’s attempts to take corporeal form.
As for art, what an incredible opening!! It’s going to be a tough act to follow, but I think readers are going to win no matter what as each art team does its best to bring the scares. Soo Lee made her debut in Tales of the Death Star‘s framing story and I’ve been eager to see what she could bring to the table which, as I’ve mentioned, she does not disappoint. Lee takes McCaig’s design for the Nightlander and runs with it, revealing both the full, nightmare-inducing reality of the spirit and a softer, more pleasant form which can lull into complacency those who fall into her trap. For the less scary version, the Nightlander presents herself like a normal Twi’lek above the waist, yet the rest of her body is billowing wisps which are ragged and wild and sharp, a sly way of denoting the truth underneath. We even get a hint of her darker form earlier on, as she switches from pretending to be Daesha’s grandfather to being the pleasant seeming form, as Lee reveals a face with sunken, yellow-ish eyes, flat nostrils, and deadly teeth in the final panel before the Nightlander’s first big reveal. As for the true version of the Nightlander, Francesco Francavilla’s mood-setting cover gives readers their first taste but it still doesn’t quite prepare us for what Lee has in store, as the Twi’lek facade drips away and out bursts the much more horrifying three-eyed face, sunken nose, Predator-like jaws and the giant teeth, while the Nightlander’s full body becomes a squiggly mess of ghostly tentacles to the point the full image made me shudder!! Smith and Betancourt seem to have fun doing their best to accentuate Lee’s horrifying work, as they maintain the usual type-face and word bubbles up until the Nightlander’s first reveal, as her name is written out in giant spectral bubble letters, a deep purple lining the outside of the letters as they are filled in with a grey-ish blue similar to Lee’s colors. The Nightlander’s word bubbles then match this look and it’s so unworldly and unique compared to everyone else’s, it really sticks out and feels creepy, leaving me to imagine a sweet yet resonating voice for her words, where there’s almost like a melodic tone to it but there’s a constantly building undertone that rattles you inside. Lee’s colors are so moody throughout, whether it’s the nighttime arrival on Ryloth with the heavier purples and blue or the almost shockingly bright Great Hall with yellows, browns, and greens, the subtle and not so subtle choices she made help open up the issue. Given the belief the veil between living and dead is so close on the night of the funeral, the emphasis on the moodier blues and purples of dusk provide an out-of-this-plane existence to the Nightlander’s nasty schemes and a great way to track how much closer she is to joining the land of the living, while the brighter and less moody scenes set in the Great Hall, and during panels where the Nightlander is defeated, for now, helps denote when our heroes are getting closer to pushing the specter back. Also, it’s neat how, in the panel where the Nightlander attempts to morph into Qui-Gon’s face, we get a spooky melting pot (literally) of facial stages, be it the normal-ish looking Twi’lek woman, the horrifying early glimpse of the true version within, and a shiver-inducing take on Qui-Gon, where one eye is surrounded by wraithlike tendrils and crackling with energy, the other a yellow dot as small as a mini marble ball.
Here are a few other things:
- The Nightmare Conjunction, which in this issue is said to be a celestial event when the veil between the living and the dead lessens, was first mentioned in Scott’s Dooku: Jedi Lost, as something the Sith Lord Darth Krall held back in a time lost to legends. The Nightlands themselves got a mention in Scott’s The High Republic: Tempest Runner and The High Republic #3 – Phase I! I love how he’s been able to place these little things along the way and pay them off down the line…makes you wonder what else he’s sneaking in for more stories to come!
- I asked Scott about the Nightmare Conjunction in his Ask Me Anything thread on Bluesky, and it’s also on his Instagram too. He’ll be answering what questions he can in a special newsletter soon and we’ll try to link to it as soon as possible after he posts!
- We got our first looks at all three issues with previews at 2025’s SDCC. Issue #2, with Vincenzo Riccardi, is currently scheduled for October 22, while issue #3, with Robert Hack, should follow on November 19.
- Scott has more Star Wars to come after this, even though The High Republic initiative’s main story has ended, as he’s writing more Rey and Finn in The Jaws of Jakku (out October 9, my birthday!), an Audible Original Audiobook which is set between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. While this sounds fascinating and I loved we’re getting more Rey and Finn, it’s been a downright disappointment these originals have been locked in Amazon’s eco-system and there’s been zero word on a written version for fans who cannot experience audio books for many various reasons.
Tales from the Nightlands #1 is a deft, chillingly fun, and exciting beginning to the newest tale of horrors by Cavan Scott, where the new threat of the Nightlander hits a high bar early on, leaving me eager to see what’s in store in the next two issues.
+ Nightlander’s introduction should give readers the chills in the best way possible
+ Extra layers with Anakin and Obi-Wan
+ Terrifying visuals from Soo Lee and team, setting the bar high
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him and the website on Bluesky.
DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this comic 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.
TALES FROM SERIES:
Tales from the Nightlands: #2 | #3
Tales from the Rancor Pit (graphic novel) | Tales from the Death Star (graphic novel)
VADER’S CASTLE SERIES:
Tales from Vader’s Castle (miniseries) | Return to Vader’s Castle (miniseries) | Shadow of Vader’s Castle (one-shot) | Ghost of Vader’s Castle (miniseries)