Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi Volume 1 - Force Storm Paperback – December 18, 2012

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi is a bit of an ambitious idea for a comic book series from Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm. For years now, the various Star Wars "guides" have always included snippets about the civilizations that existed before the Old Republic, and the beginnings of the Jedi Order. It was always just a few pages or paragraphs, here or there, with tantalizing information.Now, with this series, these brief mentions are being expanded, and the story of the pre-cursors of the Republic and the Jedi is finally being told. In the first volume of this series (which takes place many millennia before the beginning of the Star Wars films), Force Storm, the Force-sensitives of the galaxy are gathered together on living vessels and taken to the planet Tython. Once there, they begin to learn about this mysterious energy field that has been studied, worshiped, and is the center of much philosophical and scholarly debate, this "Force". After the name of some philosophers that were part of the group taken to the planet, the new servants and students of this Force are called the Je'daii Order.In this early period, the Je'aii are quite different from their successors that will follow them many thousands of years later. For one thing, they are not divided so sharply into different camps, as the Jedi and Sith are later to be. For them, too light-sided is just as bad as too dark-sided. They both blind you to the bigger picture of the universe, and put one out of balance. Though this view is wrong according to canon, for those just starting out in their knowledge of the Force, it makes sense. Particularly since whatever force (pun entirely unintended) drew them together for the purpose of studying and learning of the Force, also dropped them off on a planet in a system where too much of a wide-spread deviance to one side or the other of the Force will spell doom via deadly "Force storms" (hence the title of this graphic novel).Another interesting plot point is that, at this time, the Je'daii do not have lightsabers. The lightsaber appears to be an invention of the evil Rakatan "Infinite Empire" who seem to be the main antagonists of the series. In fact, not all Je'daii have weapons, and those that do have some special "Force-forged" instruments. Think of the Sword of Leah in the Shannara books or other magically empowered or crafted weapons in various fantasy series, and that is the closes comparison one could make. Though far more powerful than other weapons, it couldn't stand up to a lightsaber, and maybe not even a blaster either.The story continues on from the development of the Je'daii Order and goes forward millennia to the eventual discovery of Tython by agents of the Infinite Empire. These special agents, steeped in the Dark Side of the Force, are called "Force Hounds", and they have sensed a planet with an immense concentration of Force-sensitives out somewhere in space. They seek this world, and when one of them finds it, the Je'daii must restrain him before his dark side presence, fueled by his incredible power, tilts the planet into a Force storm of cataclysmic proportions.I quite enjoyed this book. Though the first volume ended rather abruptly only partway through (one of the pitfalls of an ongoing story), because it was interesting to see the beginnings of the Jedi, and how their religion and way of life differs from what comes later. It was also fun to just see the vague paragraphs of various "guides" and other sources expanded into a coherent story.The only problem I had was that, despite the lack of many technological elements of later years, and a supposedly completely different way of life at the time, the actual culture, mannerisms, and even fashions, that we see are just the same as those that would come later on. There seems to have been a cultural, linguistic, and fashion stasis, and it kind of messed with my suspension of disbelief. This story takes place nearly 37,000 years before the original Star Wars film, and nearly 12,000+ years before any other published story. Why is almost nothing different?The other issue that some might have (though not me so much) was that some of the concepts and ideas introduced completely conflicted with other Star Wars media that are set later on. But, given the fact that there are certain stories people, including myself, often pretend didn't happen in-universe (such as the prequels and most of the chronologically later books, in my case, for instance), this is not insurmountable. It's just if this is a major problem for someone, it may bother them.Despite these two (minor) issues, this was a fun story that takes us back to the earliest periods of the galaxy far, far away. I quite enjoyed this one, and can't wait for the second volume to come out.

Lately I've been reading a few Star wars books a month as I'm a huge fanboy and collector. I just started to really enjoy books on my new kindle hd fire for convenience and read my last paper star wars book the other day. After enjoying the Bane trilogy,knight errant, old republic Revan,etc, I've grown a fondness for star wars storylines far down the timeline before the film's. Previously I mostly read the post ROTJ books. Path of the Jedi interested me as is set so long even before the ancient old republic tales. As a comic geek, I was excited for path of the Jedi. Artwork was amazing, writing pretty good , and an interesting premise. It was really cool to read an origin of Jedi story that was very far removed from most familiar star wars features.

I own a few of the Star Wars graphic novel collections (Dark Times and multiple Omnibus volumes) and the artwork in Dawn of the Jedi is by far my favorite; it's rich, colorful, vibrant, and beautifully detailed. The story telling follows suit and flows wonderfully. Overall the quality of the book is amazing and I truly believe that everyone who worked on this has set a new standard for Star Wars comics to come. Considering that this begins everything Star Wars, I already felt that that alone put this on a pedestal by itself, but the team that worked on this really put it over the top. I can't wait for the next volume and I'm keeping my fingers crossed more is revealed about the Tho Yor.

I didn't realize that this was a graphic novel when I bought it, I thought I was getting a plain old text novel but no. I was a little irked by it at first but I'm over it now. I do think amazon/kindle should make it more obvious what is a graphic novel and what is a text novel because I am sure I am not the only one that purchased this in error.This graphic novel is a bit short in my personal opinion. For 10 bucks I think it should have been twice as long. On the plus side the artwork is good and it's exciting to learn about how the Jedi got started.The biggest negative I have for this book is how amazon/kindle goes about formatting it. I don't have a true kindle, I use the kindle app for android on my phone which is great for reading novels but not so much for viewing graphic novels. It puts the entire page on my screen shrinking down the text so much that I have to hold my phone super close to my face to even read it and there is no way to adjust the sizing. You can double tap a panel to expand that part of the page to zoom in but it doesn't make it that much bigger and you have to watch finger placement otherwise you will be moving back or forward a page without intending to do so. It would have been better in my opinion to make the zoom in fuction as pinch to zoom function instead of double tap.I ended up using my laptop to read a majority of the book and that was only a little better. My laptop has a 17.1 inch screen and kindles ereader for PC does not take advantage of the larger screen at all. Imagine looking at a comic book page the size of your average paper from a paperback novel smack dab in the middle of your screen with a bunch of wasted space all around it and again no way to adjust the sizing. Also the only way to zoom in is by double clicking on a panel just like for the phone.The only way I could see this being a truly satisfying read is if I had a 10 inch tablet to view it on.

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