This week we also get a The Clone Wars digest, and Jeremy Barlow takes us into some darker territory with ‘The Enemy Within’.
While many of the previous Clone Wars-era digest comics have been aimed at younger readers, writer Jeremy Barlow delivers something a bit less kid-friendly with ‘The Enemy Within’. With the official Dark Horse blurb calling it The Dirty Dozen in space, you can tell that this product is aimed at an older audience: since the younger crowd might not even understand the reference to a 1967 WWII film (or its attempts at sequels in the 1980s), and that the film, about a group of convicts turned into a platoon to assassinate some German high command (and their girlfriends) was considered pretty violent for its day (though perhaps it would fit in as PG-13 today). Barlow himself describes it as Dirty Dozen meets LA Confidential, and that should be enough to get most readers intrigued.
What’s going on? A platoon of clones gets a rookie sergeant and gets shot down by the Seps on a contested world. Off target, they fight their way through the onslaught of droids investigating their crash site, then move out through a nasty forest environment to attempt to complete their mission: investigate a riverside industrial complex as a potential Separatist foundry. The group gets divided up when they stumble into the locals’ sacred ruins and the tenderfoot sarge takes the two veteran clones, Syke and Ghost, to continue onward. And then the mission takes a turn. I won’t spoil it for you any further, other than perhaps with the story’s title and Barlow’s description, you can figure it out.
Barlow, who has written and edited quite a few Star Wars stories before branching out to other titles, returns to his Star Wars roots with a doozy of a story. While we don’t get to know many of the clones, we get a good sense of Sergeant “Banks” and the squad’s top two men, Syke and Ghost, as well as their offworld CO, Greibs Kishpaugh. We get a bit of sense of place, and are teased enough with what we need to know for the story – maybe I would have liked a little more worldbuilding, but since the story is told from a character’s point of view, we stick with what they know, and that works too.
Brian Koschak’s art, with colors by Mae Hao and Marlon Ilagan, sets up a slightly different feel to the clone wars than some of the styles seen previously. The battle droids and clones are stylized more simply with their flat armor, while sometimes great texture is given to the rain clouds, hair, and fur. While I like the way the battle droids are simplified, especially since the story doesn’t focus on them except as sheer numbers, I’m not sure that the low detail on the clones works well, especially when it seems that way more detail went into some of Koschak’s forest denizens than the clones. We can easily track the individual troopers of note, by their color patterns and dings, but sometimes it feels like they used the Clone Wars micro-series as a style guide for oversimplicity. I really like the Tartakovsky style, but it works best when the entire artwork uses it.
Overall, it’s a good story that would make for a great one-off episode of the show. The Clone Wars has used some similar ideas in the past, so it seems unlikely that ‘The Enemy Within’ would get used. If you’re a fan of clone-centered storylines, this one is definitely worth checking out. And we get cameos by a Rex pilot droid (from Star Tours) and Bultar Swan!
GONK’s verdict: Thumbs up!
According to Diamond’s shipping lists, ‘The Enemy Within’ is supposed to release today, although other sources range from Feb 29 to later in March. So hopefully you’ll see it soon at your local comic book shop.