Star Wars: Jedi, Volume 1 – The Dark Side
Story by Scott Allie
Art by Mahmud Asrar
Colors by Paul Mounts
Cover Art by Stéphane Roux
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: February 22, 2012
Cover Price: $18.99

2011 saw the resurrection or rebirth of a Star Wars comic series called Jedi. Initially envisioned as chronicles of specific individual Jedi Knights during the events of The Clone Wars, the new incarnation of the series instead delves a little deeper and further back into the history of the order, and concentrates on Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in the days he was a young trainer of apprentices and well before the time of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Subtitled The Dark Side, the new series shadows the final mission of Jinn’s padawan Xanatos and his subsequent fall to the Dark Side of the Force. Xanatos, as a character, had previously been explored as an antagonist in the Jedi Apprentice young adult book series; but this trade paperback delves into an era when he was still a boy.

Intractable and brooding, Xanatos as a 13-year-old padawan evokes the same feel as the Anakin Skywalker of Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. It is almost as if the Jedi surrounding him cannot sense the menace and darkness beginning to envelop him; but in the words of Jedi Grand Master Yoda, “hard to see, the dark side is.”