Spinner opens a can of worms when he opens an ancient box in Lost Tribe of the Sith – Spiral #3. Will he and Takara Hilts be able to put the dark Jedi back into the bag?
The rebellious Spinner might be getting himself in too deep when his plot to steal the Doomed’s secret weapon goes awry: it’s not a weapon in the box, exactly… but the dark Jedi, Lord Dreypa. In issue #3 of Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith – Spiral (Profile on DarkHorse.com), Lord Dreypa, awakened from stasis after thousands of years, reaches Kesh, with Spinner at his side, educating him on the current state of the Sith. The two land at Spinner’s hometown of Eorm, where Parlan Spinner’s kinsmen are slaves, punished for generations for the crimes of their forefather. While Dreypa’s memories are still hazy, he overthrows the local leader, Lord Galathos, and liberates the Spinners from the slums. As prisoners, Takara Hilts and Kaliska witness the destruction and recognize that Dreypa is a threat that both the Grand Lord and the Doomed need to contain. They escape on uvaks back to the Southern lands, while Dreypa and his army of former slaves seeking vengeance head onward to the capital. Will Iliana Hilts’ uvak squadrons be enough to protect the stability of the Sith on Kesh? or will the Doomed have to save the day? Spinner is getting his revenge — but is he still a slave? And why does Dreypa retreat to a dead end volcano? Trouble’s going to erupt in the last pages!
Using some back history to move the story slightly forward in time, the story jumps forward from where we left off at the end of the previous issue. We get caught up on the lost time, while Dreypa has Spinner give him some exposition. Though still recovering from being in the box, Dreypa is tremendously powerful, and sets his own goals, and manages to convince people to follow him, not as their leader, but by offering them a chance at revenge. While I like the introduction of this new villain, he just looks a little goofy – more like a comic supervillain than a Star Wars character – but he is a man out of time, so perhaps the suit and cape are just several millennia out of fashion.
Overall, the issue moves us from the tale of Spinner and Takara using different ways to achieve the same goal: following their own ambition to make something of themselves, to a larger battle for civilization. Takara’s mother is seen leading the Sith forces against the upstarts, while the Doomed mount up for war, knowing that Dreypa might be unstoppable once he regains his full power. In the end, Spinner is not sure about his boss’ sanity, but the there’s a method to the madness. With the change in scope, I felt that we didn’t really get enough of the two original starting characters, Takara and Spinner, as the camera is shared with Dreypa and Iliana. The winged spokeswoman of the Doomed, Kaliska has a pretty small role in this book as well. Hopefully the next issue with bring more focus back on Takara and Spinner as they deal with the dark Jedi and his allies. With John Jackson Miller increasing the scope on the story, some of the more personal bits for the characters and some of the humor seem to dip a bit. Maybe I just wanted more of Takara and Spinner butting heads, and it’s harder to do that when they go their separate ways.
Andrea Mutti’s art is fairly good throughout, though I feel that it is stronger in the front half of the issue, with more closeups of characters (or maybe a few less mid-range panels with not enough detail). There’s a great page of Dreypa confidently making landfall, but some of the shots of uvak flocks lacked detail. Some good action with some of the battles, but not quite a full taste of the combat in the final battles – it felt that the taking of Eorm is given more time and detail. I do like the style of the Sith on Kesh – the military men are a cross of feudal Japan and medieval Europe – although one soldier reminded me of Dallan Morvis from Knights of the Old Republic: War.
Dreypa’s raising the stakes by introducing something nasty – will Kesh survive? We’ll find out in issue #4!