Kerra Holt learns that nowhere is safe in this week’s Knight Errant. GONK checks in to see how the escape plan is going, in this double John Jackson Miller Star Wars comic week!
Kerra Holt is on a new mission: she’s learned that her parents aren’t dead, and now she’s off to infiltrate Lord Odion’s realm to find them, and also stop Odion’s current sinister plans. Can our Jedi-behind-the-lines keep her cover in this third issue of Star Wars: Knight Errant – Escape (Dark Horse profile) even as she stumbles across something dark?
Kerra’s parents have been forced to help find the Helm of Ieldis for Odion, so Kerra, as one of Odion’s novitiates working in a pack, is tracking down the Helm’s whereabouts in hopes of reaching her folks – and keeping the Helm away from Odion or any of his rivals. Sticking with her fellow Novitiates, she’s caught a ride with Odion’s general, Yulan. Eager to get the mission started again, Holt pushes her Novitiates into siding with her to prod Yulan into heading off to Skarpos. Tracking down the general in the bowels of a moon base, Kerra Holt discover’s one of Odion’s secrets: the moon base is a bizarre nursury, where the children of the Odionate are raised and taught in solitary isolation to be the Odionate’s docile workforce, away from causing pain to their hypersensitive Lord. Talk about a guy who just doesn’t like kids.
After this peek under the hood of Odion’s empire, everyone is off to Skarpos, where they fall under attack of the hordes of bat-winged warriors of Lord Malakite. Before they can make a raid toward Devil’s Tower while Yulan fends off Malakite’s low tech flyers, surprise! Odion’s kid brother Daiman shows up, as one of Odion’s other Novitiates, Glenk, was really a spy for Daiman. Three-way fight! Realizing that they need to grab the Helm quickly, the Novitiate pack scoots up the mesa, and Kerra jumps into the cave first, then sabotages her compatriots and reveals her true identity. Inside the cave, she finds a clue of her mother’s presence… and SURPRISE! She’s not alone. And that someone else has the Helm!
This issue of Knight Errant pushes us toward the finale, with some secrets revealed, a little action, and Kerra roaming around in a catsuit. (See Dunc’s related post on Mara Jade’s catsuit). Over the course of the Knight Errant storyline, Kerra’s clothes have become even more tight-form-fitting, from Jedi robes, to pilot action speedsuit to catsuit. (Odion also seems to have changed in art style over the course of the series – for some reason I think he was more Juggernaut-bulky to start with, and is now more Superman-ish. But at least we have the same art team, Marco Castiello on pencils, Vincenzo Acunzo with inks, Michael Atiyeh on colors, for the entire story arc.) We also get to see a big chunk into Odion’s motives – why he doesn’t like kids, and how he formed his own philosophy for Sith rule – and how Yulan embraced this view.
One of the great things about Knight Errant is that John Jackson Miller provides the characters all with such different voices, and having Kerra Holt undercover in this arc gives her a new voice – she’s trying to fit in with Odion’s minions, but her pesky Jedi beliefs keep bubbling up. In a neat reversal, we see the other Novitiates emphasizing teamwork (more to monitor each other and prevent any one person from getting the credit) while Kerra keeps pushing to take the initiative, because she’s driven with her own mission. And she jumps ship once she realizes that she holds the upper hand… so she thinks. And when she trips over a clue indicating her parents’ presence, her hope really shines.
And I’m looking forward with hope to the rest of this series. How will Odion’s nursery school system tie into the end of this storyline of missing parents, and Thor’s helmet? I’m sure we will find out – as with also the story arc title, “Escape”. Kerra’s got a plan for getting in… but when she betrays her Sith Lords, does she have a plan for getting out?