YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW INCREDIBLY GOOD THIS COMIC IS UNTIL YOU REREAD IT FOR LIKE THE THIRD TIME AND ALL AT ONCE AND THINK ABOUT WHERE ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE COMING FROM AND WHAT THE HEART OF THE JEDI’S ISSUES ARE AND OH MY GOD THEN IT HITS LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN.
Okay, maybe that’s just me, but I reread this coming in one sitting again and it just smacked right into me how incredibly spot on this comic is about the main issue and what it’s doing to Anakin. The story is that there’s a war that’s been raging for centuries on a planet that has torn it apart, the Open and the Closed all want each other dead, no one even really knows who started it or why they’re fighting, only that nothing matters more than winning this war just for the sake of winning the war. There’s a Scavenger who is dropping kites in from the sky, pieces of salvaged art and culture, so that it might spark a memory of how they used to be more than this, but ultimately the Scavenger wants to furiously kill all the older members (and maybe even the Jedi sent to help them because he didn’t side with her and kill all the older Closed and Open) and “start over” with the younger ones, who say, wtf, no, whatever else is going on, this is our fight too. These are our people!
Interspersed with this is a story about Palpatine strong-arming the Jedi into letting him spend an afternoon with Anakin to thank him for his help with Naboo, to help mentor him while Anakin’s rage is having difficulty getting it under control. Palpatine takes him to the Underworld, where Senators are gambling away and Palpatine spins a story about how they’re corrupt, if we could just make them slip up a little more, we could go after them, because the system is hampering us. Anakin nudges the dice (which is what Palpatine wanted him to do), then the Senator loses his game, Palpatine takes Anakin back and says, oh, if only I could do more. The Jedi can’t just wipe him out, even knowing he’s corrupt, and my hands are tied, too. Oh, if only there was some other path outside of the system. By the way, have you ever considered leaving the Jedi and coming to work for me?
Anakin is considering leaving the Jedi, he fully intends to and has made those intentions to Obi-Wan known, who says he’ll respect it, if that’s what Anakin truly wants, but he believes Anakin is better off with them. In the end, Obi-Wan saves the day through calling in the Jedi, by saying there was a source of Tibanna gas on the planet, who cares if that’s actually true, the point was that he wasn’t on his own, that he was working to use and make better the system that he was working with, because they’d have died if they were on their own. Being part of something bigger is what saved them, what allowed them to give this planet any kind of chance at all.
THAT IS EXACTLY AT THE HEART OF EVERYTHING THAT’S GOING ON WITH ANAKIN AND THE JEDI. Everything in this issue is designed to be an echo of what Anakin is going through, right down to how he thinks the Open vs the Closed are like the Jedi fighting the Sith, which is what Palpatine will also tell him one day in the future, that they’re both “evil” from a different point of view, that both want power, and it completely sidesteps that the Jedi and the Sith are not mirror images of each other (no matter how much marketing makes it seem that way sometimes), that the Jedi do not want to win a war just for the sake of winning a war, and it’s not about fighting the Sith because they’re Sith, but because they go around murdering people and oppressing entire planets, that you can’t say one side is “just as bad” as the other when one side is going around murdering entire peoples and planets on purpose, you can’t say it about the Rebellion or the Resistance or the Republic, because there are legitimate reasons to fight and real people being fought to protect. But it’s sure going to be a handy excuse for Anakin, who is going to strip context out of everything, when Palpatine is dangling the possibility of saving Padme in front of him, that Anakin doesn’t necessarily want to think that way, but if there’s wiggle room to justify what he really wants (saving Padme), then he’ll jump on it.
But at the heart of this moment, the question is: Do you remain as part of the system that is deeply flawed because it’s the only way you can see to make any kind of actual betterment for people? Or do you leave the system all together, doing whatever you want, where you can act more directly against things that are wrong, but you have no weight behind you other than your own?
Palpatine is planting the seeds in Anakin for the latter, that going outside of the system seems like an appealing idea for someone who feels he’s not doing enough, that the Jedi won’t just go in and clean up the mess. And Palpatine makes it seem appealing because he’s deliberately side-stepping the consequences that would happen if the Jedi did that, that we see incredibly clearly in books like Master and Apprentice or Queen’s Shadow that these methods would not work. Padme goes around the Senate in TPM and pays for it for years, in her inability to actually get anything real done. Qui-Gon is only able to help the people on Pijal because he’s part of the Republic, if he’d left it, the slaves would have been absolutely fucked and Czerka would have gotten away with it. He understands that, if they just take out one Hutt, in a few months, a new one will take their place and everything will be back to where they started.
Obi-Wan’s point is that the only chance they have–deeply flawed and imperfect as it is (he says it directly when Anakin says “this entire world is just gone because that’s the system?”, “I don’t like it either. But, yes. The system is… not perfect.” “Then the system should change.” “Perhaps someday it will, Anakin.” THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR THE RESOLUTION OF THE STORY.)–matches up with exactly what Obi-Wan has always believed, that you work from within the system to change it, to make it better, because that’s the only thing that actually seems to work beyond just a few months at most.
And it’s precisely what happens:
The Jedi could go storming onto that planet and separate everyone, but as soon as they’re gone, the fighting will resume. They’re only 10,000 in a galaxy of quadrillions and they have other people who need their help, too. The only way to get anywhere is to be part of the Republic, to have that weight behind them, to be allowed to negotiate in the first place (if you’re not part of the Republic, then whatever treaty you negotiate doesn’t mean anything because no one’s going to honor it, the Republic isn’t going to honor something they never agreed to, never gave anyone the authority to offer on their behalf, NOR SHOULD THEY, otherwise Cad Bane can just go in and make a fucking awful treaty and have that be honored, too), to use the system as best you can to make changes for the better, which ultimately Anakin agrees with, hence deciding to stay with the Jedi.
But the seeds have still been planted and they’re definitely going to grow. Anakin’s desire to just go where he wants and do what he wants is going to be constantly at war with his desire to stay with the Jedi (with Obi-Wan) and his understanding that Obi-Wan has a point–as powerful as Anakin is, he’s not an entire system of government, that being part of something else makes him stronger, allows him a reach and an authority he would not have on his own. It’s not until he thinks he’s strong enough to be that entire government (and he’s deep in the grips of the dark side and his own fear at what he’s done to save Padme’s life) that he’s willing to truly step away from the Jedi. It’s not until Palpatine has engineered an entire war to completely overwhelm the Jedi’s attempts to change things (and there’s a very strong recurring theme in canon about how the Jedi keep trying to nudge things towards the better, keep trying to appeal for better decisions, and are consistently turned down–hell, that happens in this comic, when Mace tries to say no to Palpatine, who then strongarms him into being forced to agree) so that they’re too busy putting out tire fires and being in triage mode to actually make enough change anymore, especially when they have so little real authority themselves, as compared to the Senate and the Chancellor, that Anakin will be willing to step away.
What Palpatine does here is masterful, he lets Anakin think that doing something illegal and outside the system (ie, a small taste of just doing whatever it is you want to do, when you want someone taken out) will lead to clearing away some of the corruption in the system, instead of addressing the far more complicated questions of how easy that kind of power is to abuse and why it’s actually a really awful idea to go down that road, even if you think you’re doing it with good intentions. The system should change, pretty much every single person is onboard with that. (Except Palpatine and the other corrupt Senators who benefit from it.) That’s not the argument. The argument is about how that should change–radical action or steady work from within and what each of those entails and when you’re stepping over a line that you’ll pay for (which isn’t about yourself, but about the good you were doing, the people you can help, if you’re allowed to help them) and how Palpatine just threw a giant ball of mud into the pond that is Anakin’s understanding of all of this, because he needs those waters muddy to turn Anakin towards him. To take all those good intentions and all that power Anakin has and continue to use it for his own ends, rather than Anakin actually truly helping anyone on a long-term basis.
ALL WRAPPED UP IN A COMIC THAT ALSO HAS THE MOST GORGEOUS ARTWORK AND AN EXCITING ACTION STORY AND SERIOUSLY LOOK AT THIS COVER:
I went into this thinking, okay, I’m going to scream about Obi-Wan being amazing and Anakin’s star-struck face any time Obi-Wan does something and yell “I FEEL YOU, ANAKIN” and how Obi-Wan was planning to leave the Jedi Order with Anakin if that’s what he decided and just have fun.
Instead, I got a comic that just fucking nailed everything about one of the central conflicts between Anakin and the Jedi in a way that wasn’t really even that apparent until I actually started thinking about it (and have been yelling about it a lot recently, as my understanding of the GFFA evolves) and how there’s legitimate frustration and grievances there, but Palpatine strips out context and twists everything around to get his own desired result and it seems perfectly reasonable until you stop to think about it and how he played Anakin perfectly. That it showcases how there aren’t any easy answers to this, only people trying to do their best within deeply flawed circumstances.
THIS COMIC WAS SO FUCKING GOOD.
jacobvanloon
janainaart
tangentwithtanner
blakekathryn
