Comic: Poe Dameron, Vol. 2: The Gathering Storm

[colls]

Continuing the adventures of the ace pilot hero of Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens! Poe Dameron faces the wrath of a vengeful Agent Terex! But how does Terex always seem to know what Black Squadron is doing? Could there truly be a traitor in the Squadron's midst? Poe will undertake a secret mission from General Organa herself...to escort none other than C-3PO on a dangerous mission to the planet Kaddak! But what will be revealed in a peek into Terex's past? (goodreads summary)



1. Poe spends some time trying to suss out who could be the mole and winds up taking the mole with him. What are your thoughts on Oddy Muva? What do you think will happen to him and his wife next?

2. This volume gives us a lot of back story for Terex. What was your favorite tidbit about his past?

3. How many droid 'Operatives' do you think C-3PO has drifting around the galaxy?

4. Anything else?

As usual, there's no need to answer all (or any) of the questions. Please bring up other aspects of the volume as well.

Next up: Star Wars: Poe Dameron, Vol. 3: Legend Lost

Comments

[colls]

1. The minute he chose Oddy to go with him on the mission I knew Oddy was the mole. I'm glad they didn't go into a whole "how could you?!" and "oh, he was holding your wife" scene - the time was better spent on escape. Hopefully the Resistance takes them in and figures out a way to prevent spies-under-diress.

2. Terex and his love for his armor is rather amusing. Not amusing is his Imperial conditioning when it's mixed with his inflated sense of self-importance - the scariest villains are sometimes the ones who think they're champions of righteous causes. I'm not sure what he hoped to achieve by teaming up with First Order - I suspect maybe it's that he thought a new Empire was rising and has since found them wantin.g.

3. NGL, C-3PO as a spy master is not where I was expecting this to go. Nor was I expecting Mister Bones - which came from one of the books set between original movies and prequel movies. Now I have to revisit THAT series because I don't think I finished it.

4. I think the panel below is really interesting. Instead of being blocked off it's composed to reflect chaos. I liked how visually the artist did that with the battle scene.


(click image for full size)

[justanorthernlight]

It's funny, I remembered a lot of plot details from the first time I read this series (the Egg, Grakkus the Hutt, Oddy, Terex's backstory, L'ulo's death), but I completely forgot about the droid spy subplot. It's entertaining, though, and I like that it utilizes Threepio's skills in a realistic way. Nunzix's personality and dialogue are very entertaining, and I liked Threepio and BB-8 being badasses in the caves.

"My goodness, I do wish the Maker had foreseen some of the situations I would find myself in over the years. If so, the ability to run might have been a nice design feature to incl--"

The return of Mr. Bones and the fact that Snap still carries his personality matrix into battle also gave me feelings.

There's a neat parallel between Poe not considering the lowly tech Oddy Muva worthy of suspicion and Threepio's droid spies. They both blend into the background, keep things running unobtrusively, but aren't really viewed as active players until things stop running smoothly. Poe is pretty blinded by his bias towards officers and pilots. Still, Oddy made a terrible decision not coming to Poe or Leia with the fact that his wife was a hostage.

I think they did a good job of giving Terex an interesting backstory without every trying to make him sympathetic. Young!Terex has a horrible earnestness about him, he kind of reminds me of Thara from Battlefront: Twilight Company. My favorite scene is definitely him listening in on Corlax and coming to his realization about the Empire being beyond salvage.

I lol'd at the silent Kangiklub/Guavian Death Gang byplay going on in the background of issue 9 when Poe and Threepio are talking about Han. It's the tight writing and attention to little details like that that make this whole series stand out to me.

[colls]

There's a neat parallel between Poe not considering the lowly tech Oddy Muva worthy of suspicion and Threepio's droid spies.
oh, yes! That is a nice comparison.

Terex is one of the more interesting villains for me so far because it's possible to give us insight and not make him sympathetic.

I chuckled a bit about the Guavian Death Gang thing, too - and it's ironic to be reading that bit right along with Last Shot which is leaving some breadcrumbs as to why he might be headed towards some of those death gangs. Continuity among so many creators and with so many timelines has got to be hard in SW universe and when they pull it off - even with little nuggets like this - I'm impressed.

[starlady]

While it was clear that Oddy was the spy, I liked the motivation he had for doing it--it made sense, it fit within the previously established confines of the story, he wasn't just doing it because the plot required a betrayer and he was the closest person standing around.

I really liked the part about Threepio being a droid spymaster and I spent the whole time wishing that J.J. Abrams had done something 10% as interesting with Threepio in TROS, as opposed to the mawkish jokes he did repeatedly instead.

The art continues to be good.

[colls]

The only one line of his I liked in TFA was the "You probably didn't recognize me on the account of my arm being red." Or maybe that's just the only one I remember off the top of my head? I'd like to think they meant for him to have more of a role in the last film since he seemed to stick by Leia's side a lot.