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 enlarge | Author: Haden Blackman
Creators: Brian Ching, David Ross
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $8.96
You Save: $6.99 (44%)
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Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 38713
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 104
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.3
ISBN: 1593078919
Dewey Decimal Number: 741
EAN: 9781593078911
ASIN: 1593078919
Publication Date: August 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-10 of 10 | | « PREV | | |
 Not bad at all September 15, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
First, I must say that I'm a casual fan of SW. I read a couple of novels, comics, played some games so I don't know all the storylines, what is cannon and what is not, etc. I just love to read good stories set in different universes and I don't mind if it screws some "facts" established in others stories. That said, I must say that I liked it. It was not too predictable for a Star Wars story and it is refreshing to read something set in this time period. My only complaint is that it could have been longer. I would have cared more for the characters but I suppose that to read the novel and the game will add some meat to the bone. So, for a Graphic Novel, it does well what it is suppose to do and I recommend this product.
 Save your money September 13, 2008
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
I was curious about the story behind Force Unleashed, but this turned out to be a complete waste of money. Yeah the entire story is told here, but it's done with zero dramatic tension or character development. Everything is described in passing (the entire story is told in flashback) and you never once get into the character's heads or feel the awesome spectacle that the game has been hyped to convey. Bravo to the artists for some above average visuals, but they've been hamstrung by the truncated narrative. In the introduction the writer/game designer describes the nerve-wracking task of selling this concept to George Lucas, and you wish they'd put even half as much effort into this adaptation.
Beyond everything else, this comic proves that not every Star Wars product needs to be canon. A Jedi with "amped up" force powers is perfect for a video game experience, but force that character into continuity and you've destroyed all credibility. All of a sudden we've got multiple Force users running around in a period where they're supposed to be extinct, a Jedi whose powers eclipse Luke Skywalker's, revisions to the founding of the Rebel Alliance, and other unnecessary "revelations." If Star Wars ever cleans house and reboots the timeline, the events here need to be disregarded.
 Unleashed Mistery September 11, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
A wonderfully surprising look into what happened after the birth of Darth Vader. An unleashed look into to power of the Force and how an individual can walk the fine line between the Light and Dark. The art work mirrors modern Dark Horse Star Wars comics which provides an incredible look into the power of the Force and the Star Wars Universe. A definate must read for any Star Wars Fan.
Soullessly bland September 7, 2008
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
Never has a work of fiction so thoroughly nonplussed me. Hayden Blackman's THE FORCE UNLEASHED is not by any means a bad comic, and paradoxically, that fact works to its disadvantage. I'd prefer to hate the thing outright, but I can't even bring myself to care about it.
Name any aspect of literary quality. You will not find it represented in THE FORCE UNLEASHED. Again, it's not that the comic is terrible; on the contrary, it's devoid of any notable characteristics at all. The plot is a summary in the form of flashbacks to events which occurred years earlier. As a result, the story is totally detached from itself. The intrusive voices of the narrators provide some context but no emotion. I could not describe the characters' personalities if you paid me. They seldom react to supposedly moving events, or when they do, Blackman glosses over their reactions in a single panel. Some characters have such fascinating characteristics that the reader almost begs the author to invest them with some color. Here we have a blind, drunk ex-Jedi. Interesting, right? Wrong. We never see him drunk and he never struggles with his blindness. Over the course of 126 pages, the protagonist is never even named! (Yes, he has a name. Yes, it had already been revealed before the release of the comic. I'm not throwing Blackman any bones.)
The fight scenes, ostensibly the highlight of the video game upon which this comic is based, are summarized in a bare minimum of panels: "My master tore through that shipyard, using everything Vader had taught him - and some maneuvers he invented himself. And as Vader commanded, he left no witnesses. Eventually, he reached Master Kota..." (Page 26.) Gee, that was thrilling. Even the most protracted battles lack so much as a clever format to propel them. There's never a montage of individual blows to provide visual detail. There's never a break to focus on the characters' faces and thereby indicate their emotions. (Well, okay, maybe that introspective poster-splash on 113. But I repeat, I'm not throwing Blackman any bones.) Worse, the soullessness of the story leaches any interest out of the art.
Yes, the art is a compensatory factor. Divested of text, THE FORCE UNLEASHED is one of Dark Horse's most visually stunning productions. Problem is, I can't force myself to enjoy the gorgeous four-color illustrations. There's no emotion behind them, so it's impossible to find any emotion in them. But just to honor the artists' Herculean endeavors, I'll treat them individually.
Brian Ching, the primary artist, is polished and atmospheric. While he lacks a sense of striking composition, his layouts are sufficiently varied to maintain the reader's attention. Late in his career, he's beginning to discipline the scribbly lines and loose anatomy for which he was once infamous. Sure, his fingers still look like greenbeans and his outlines still deform like melting marshmallows. But there's a smoothness to his shading which was absent in his earlier works and serves to tie his panels together into an absorbing environment.
While Ching is clearly the most talented of the art team, THE FORCE UNLEASHED is not his best work. His alternate, Bong Dazo, is a second-rate penciller but nevertheless outshines Ching because he has never, ever produced work of this quality. (If Dark Horse's preview of KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC, Issue 33 is any indication, he does not plan to produce work of this quality again anytime in the near future.) Dazo's art is uninked, and the style definitely complements his work. In other comics, his drab, uniform blacklines look as though he applies them with a ballpoint pen; here, the variation in line thickness creates richer texture. Dazo lends uncharacteristic definition to mechanical objects and draws human faces with realistic bone structure instead of his typical cherubic blankness. His use of perspective is so extreme that the characters constantly appear to explode out of the page. The results are frequently absurd (human musculature is so exaggerated that one must wonder about steroid use in the galaxy far, far away) but frequently awe-inspiring, as well. When Bong Dazo draws a bull rancor, it is charging toward you to rip a gaping hole in the Fourth Wall and devour you whole. If not for the anesthetic effects of Blackman's script, this imagery would be brain-pulverizingly powerful.
And I would be remiss to forget the contributions of colorist Michael Atiyeh. His color scheme is pervasively rich but never overpowering. Unlike so many other colorists, Atiyeh adapts his colors to the style of the individual artists: dark and smeared for Ching, bright and distinct for Dazo. These schemes develop atmosphere on a level so subtle that they color the reader's entire perception of the comic (pun intended) without the reader ever noticing their presence at all. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the mark of a great colorist - the best in Dark Horse's current stable, in fact.
Third artist? What third artist? Oh, yeah: Wayne Nichols supplies eighteen pages. They're eminently skippable except in the unlikely event that you're actually paying attention to the plot. Nichols' art is so flat that the individual visual elements of each panel seem to have been pasted over one another instead of existing within the same field of reference. He renders technological items as bare geometric shapes. His shading is primarily crosshatched, with the result that absolutely every surface has a gravelly texture. Why, I have no idea, but then, I'm not a big fan of crosshatching in the first place. It's a pity, really, because of the three artists, Nichols is the most consistent and has the best grasp of human proportions and faces. There just isn't enough flesh to his style - as one might say of THE FORCE UNLEASHED as a whole.
Is THE FORCE UNLEASHED significant to Star Wars continuity? Only via an insignificant MacGuffin involving the formation of the Rebel Alliance. Is it damaging to Star Wars continuity? Other than the chronological misplacement of the Executor, no. In fact, the plot gets itself into the worst trouble when it tries to mesh with existing continuity. (The climactic battle is wedged into the midst of what was a page-long scene in A.C. Crispin's REBEL DAWN.) Certainly, the events described are fascinating - or could be if they were written with something approaching the energy of a comatose wombat. For the first time in my life, I must seriously recommend that readers put down a book and play its video game version to get real content.
 Same story, new faces, impossible powers August 31, 2008
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
The Force Unleashed is about a young man with Force powers so immense he can whip Vader and the Emperor simultaneously. Based on a video game in which you get to play this Force-wielding giant, the conceptual emphasis is on action and playability, rather than character or drama. Consequently the graphic novel reads like a series of set pieces, big fight scenes with a bit of exposition to tie them together. Ostensibly the plot concerns the inception of the Rebellion, but as with the beginnings of most things in the Star Wars universe, the origin of the Alliance is more than it seems.
Thematically, TFU cleaves closely to the SW universe formula - young man spends his life doing bad and redeems himself in the end with a tiny act of good. The orphaned Starkiller is raised as Darth Vader's secret apprentice, an amoral assassin who dispatches with equal skill characters on both sides of the war. Somewhere along the way he switches to being a good guy with a conscience and a love interest, though it's not really clear how either develops. Neither is why the leaders of the Rebellion trust anyone who shows up at their door expressing an interest in sacking the Empire.
The artwork is a mixed bag, with Brain Ching opening and closing the story with some finely illustrated chapters. Unfortunately, as with his stint on Knights of the Old Republic, he seems unable to work fast enough to complete an entire project - or takes assignments with impossible deadlines - and so we get a couple of less skilled artists working on the middle sections.
There is a novel of the same name covering the exact same story. I haven't yet read it, but given author Sean Williams' track record (as coauthor of one of the worst chapters of the New Jedi Order), and given that the graphic novel isn't anything worth bragging about, I'd wager the novel is as limp, or with more extraneous material, even limper. My suggestion would be to unleash your own force on the game. That is, if you have a console. PC users will have to settle for the graphic novel.
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