‘The Mandalorian #1’ Review (Marvel Comics)
Written by Rodney Barnes | Art by Georges Jeanty, Karl Story | Published by Marvel Comics
It says something for just how good The Mandalorian TV show is that I was amazed when I read that this was the first appearance of Mando in a comic. He feels so familiar now, so much a part of Star Wars lore, that it seems ridiculous. Yet, in Star Wars mythology-terms, he’s little more than a babe in arms. He does, of course, make the perfect character to star in his own comic. He’s obviously a very action-oriented character anyway, but throw in the fact the show is incredibly visual, and I’d guess you have a winner on your hands. Marvel obviously hopes so, which makes you wonder why it’s taken so long to get a comic up and running, and if there will be new, original adventures on the horizon.
Let’s take a look.
Many have made the connection between The Mandalorian and westerns, the style of the show apparently reflecting frontier life and the adventures of a lone wanderer. Perfectly natural then to remember how things started, with a bleak landscape, albeit a snowy one, and a bar brawl. Mando is, as always, chasing down a bounty and, as always, there are people who make the mistake of getting in the way. Barnes reinforces from the start, as the show did, that Mando isn’t really a ‘hero’. He fights off some patrons about to stab someone, only for that person’s gratitude to be short-lived when he realizes he’s actually the bounty. All this in a pre-credits sequence, a nice nod to the format of the show.
Another thing it looks as though the book will get right is the depiction of bounty hunting in the Star Wars universe. As the show emphasizes, far from being glamorous it’s boring, seedy, and a whole lot of conflict with minimal gain, apart from a few credits here and here. Speaking of which, back to Nevarro to collect on this bounty. Imperial credits? No thanks, Empire’s history after all, isn’t it?. Seems jobs at the moment are a little on the light side, and the money to pay them is not exactly plentiful. Striking a contemporary raw nerve Mando points out some of the reward money wouldn’t be enough to cover his fuel costs. There is, of course, always the ‘off the books’ non-Guild jobs….
Hey, a Mandalorian has to fill up the fuel tank, right? Mando takes the job.
If you are a fan of the show you will recognize virtually everything up to now, as it is almost an exact storyboard copy of the first episode. The first appearance of the stormtroopers, the realization that small pockets of the Empire still exist, the realization from Mando he’d have to grudgingly take a job from ex-Empire officers. I did enjoy the recreation of the Bounty Droid shoot-out, Jeanty and Story doing a good job with the art on the multi-panel shoot out. This leads, of course, to the ‘asset’, which we now know to be Grogu, the face that spawned a thousand plushes. That last panel, of their first meeting, is so iconic I wish it had been a full page effort.
This is slightly hard to rate, in the sense that it pretty much faithfully recreates the first episode of the show. It’s obviously a good story with good characters, but that’s the show rather than the comic. If a comic recreates a show, you can only really appraise the art. The art, indeed, is very good throughout, pacing perfect, and it all looks nicely familiar. Same with the script, nicely paced, but still essentially just adapting what’s already there. Perhaps a fresh take would have been better, looking at the same story from different viewpoints for example, or having us see The Mandalorian through the eyes of the people he encounters. Same basic story, but with a nice new twist.
Is there a demand for this? Perhaps. I’d guess there’s a far bigger demand for new, original adventures, which hopefully will follow in due course. For now, this is a decent adaptation but not essential.
Just re-watch the show again. And again. And again….
