Review: Kanan Vol. 2- First Blood

Quick Summary

Pros: The flashback story has some fun action. The book still offers readers a chance to see Kanan’s past. The artwork suits the story.

Cons: The modern day story feels like a distraction and is generally uninteresting. The book’s conclusion is a little disappointing.

Overall: This is a generally underwhelming volume overall. The volume does an alright job in making flashbacks to Kanan’s youth feel fun and exciting. However, it fails to craft a truly captivating narrative, particularly when it comes to the modern storyline. Plus, the volume’s conclusion is disappointing. All in all, this makes for a volume that may appeal to fans of Kanan but will probably not appeal to readers just looking for good Star Wars comics.

Story

Star Wars: Kanan Vol. 2- First Blood, by Greg Weisman, feels like a downgrade from the previous volume. The flashback storyline still has some fun to it and still offers readers the unique chance to see Kanan as a Padawan. However, this flashback is generally less compelling than before. Meanwhile, the modern storyline is even worse. It often feels like a distraction that offers little and it concludes the series in a disappointing way. Together, these factors make for a book with a few more negatives than positives.

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The flashback storyline in First Blood is the volume’s biggest draw. It contains exciting flashes of action, as Kanan and his master face off against droid armies and, at the end, against Grievous. This serves to elaborate on their relationship and show their role in the Clone Wars. However, while this volume offers more flashy action, it offers a less cohesive narrative and is less compelling overall. 

The modern day storyline fares even worse. Instead of simply serving as a framing story, with a single chapter introducing and concluding it, this modern story interrupts every chapter of this volume. These interruptions often do next to nothing to develop the modern storyline and just serve as quick distractions.

Even more problems come about as a result of the volume’s conclusion. The entire flashback storyline and part of the modern storyline felt like they were setting up a reunion or a least some sort of interaction between Kanan and his old partner, Janus Kasmir. However, Janus ends up just making a cameo in the final few pages of the book, nothing more. It makes the development surrounding his character feel like wasted potential and prevents the book’s conclusion from packing the punch it could have otherwise.

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Art

The artwork in First Blood may be the one place where this volume managed to improve over its predecessor. Pepe Larraz’s work is just as bold and energetic as it was before. However, the action scenes in the flashback storyline suit these visuals better than the stealth scenes of the previous volume. This allows for some impressive pages that depict the fighting of the Clone Wars in a great way. There are still some problems here and there, particularly in the chapter not drawn by Larraz, but the majority of the volume looks good. Overall, the artwork in this collection is enjoyable and suits this book.

Continuity

Star Wars: Kanan Vol. 2- First Blood continues the story from Star Wars: Kanan Vol. 1- The Last Padawan while also serving as a tie-in that helps expand the general story told across the Star Wars: Rebels TV series.

The story here does not continue in any specific comic. However, it generally continues across the Star Wars: Rebels TV series.

This volume also makes references to other works, detailed below:

• The book’s final chapter mentions Rae Sloane’s appearance in the A New Dawn novel.