Star Wars: Inquisitors #4 - Marvel Comics

STAR WARS: INQUISITORS No. 4, December 2024

For those devotees of Disney’s galaxy far, far away, Rodney Barnes’ conclusion to this “Star Wars: Inquisitors” mini-series must surely have come as a major disappointment. Indeed, despite having bested the Grand Inquisitor, Fifth Brother, as well as the Seventh and Ninth Sisters, this twenty-page periodical’s plot never properly explains just why the Dark Lord of the Sith regarded Tensu Run as such a major threat to the tyrannical Empire. Nor for that matter, how the rather lack-lustre Jedi Knight later becomes such a legendary figure for the Light side of the Force.

Instead, the screenwriter attempts to convince his audience that Darth Vader would continue to accept his proteges’ persistent failure without any penalty whatsoever, and that having been unconvincingly cornered on a planet, this title’s central protagonist would simply allow himself to be decapitated by his foe so he can “die at peace with all I’ve done.” Such illogical contrivances really do prove hard to swallow, most especially Run’s suicidal stance considering that the ‘rebel’ completely failed to establish the Padawan training temple he had planned, and seemingly also let the young apprentices on Zondula get massacred by a unit of elite Clone Troopers; “Do you forget the peace that once flowed within you? A life free of tormented lust for power?”

Just as badly scripted though, is debatably the startling willingness of Tensu to give up the fight for survival when trouble strikes. The human clearly likes the idea of Force sensitives having a school within which to train. But then appears utterly unwilling to keep such a dream alive by repeatedly complaining about his responsibility to the Jedi Order, and ultimately just surrendering himself to Shmi Skywalker’s sinister son without so much as raising his lightsaber in defiance.

Unhappily adding to all this confusion as to the main cast’s motivations and mind-sets are Ramon Rosanas’ layouts, which whilst being prodigiously pencilled, don’t debatably do all that good a job in helping along this book’s storytelling. Of particular note is the sequence depicting Run’s dubious decision to battle the Inquisitors in space, with the artist’s panels illustrating poor Pan’s meaningless death requiring a few re-readings before it becomes clear just how Tensu’s friend actually died. This need for bibliophiles to ‘fill in the gaps’ sadly occurs a second time too, when the so-called celebrated Jedi is shown awkwardly fending off an assault one moment, and is then quite literally hurled out of the temple by Vader in the next.

The regular cover art of "STAR WARS: INQUISITORS" #4 by Nick Bradshaw & Neeraj Menon