Poe Dameron

Star Wars:Poe Dameron…the story so far

Poe Dameron is the unsung hero of Star Wars:The Force Awakens, so it seems perfect that he gets his own comic series. Set a bit before Episode 7, it sees Poe being handpicked by Princess, no, General Leia Organa to locate the mysterious Lor San Tekka who holds the last piece of a map to the hidden location of Luke Skywalker. Lor San Tekka seems like a really popular guy in the Star Wars universe as the First Order is also hot on the trails of looking for him, they have assigned Agent Terex (a security enforcer for The First Order) to capture Poe Dameron and have him hand over the data to Luke’s location.
The series is written by Charles Soule who also wrote the fantastic 5 part Lando Calrissian series aswell and the artwork is by the great Phil Noto (he does all the artwork for the Marvel Star Wars comics as well as a lot of the covers for the new cannon novels)
Issue 1 shows Poe being tasked to assemble a team of some of the best pilots in the galaxy, this team becomes black squadron. They journey to one of the last record planets that Lor San Tekka was seen on called Ovanis. Once there they come across the crech, an ancient tribe who protect a glowing blue egg which they worship. The First Order tracked Poe and his company to Ovanis and launch an attack upon them and the tribe, who only seem to care about protecting their egg and not much else, Enter the main villain of the arc, Agent Terex. A suave bad guy that looks like he jumped straight out of a James Bond movie and into a galaxy far far away. He serves under Captain Phasma. I love how the new cannon comic books and novels reference each others events, a quality that was lacking in the old expanded universe comics and books. Theres a scene between Terex and Phasma where Phasma talks about a certain mission that saw Poe Steal data from a new republic senator who had info for the First Order, that was something that happened in the “Before The Awakening” novel that set up key characters in The Force Awakens.
Issue 2 picks up with the dogfight still happening in the sky between the First Orders TIE fighters and Black Squadron in their X-Wings while Poe and Agent Terex try to both get information on Lor San Tekka’s whereabouts from the natives. This happens for a few pages before The First Order decide to take control and set aflame the Crech’s glowing blue egg hoping this will give them some answers.
The start of issue 3 sees the glowing blue egg crack open and a giant Godzilla like creature emerge to wreck havoc. Another giant monster fights the creature from the egg while on the ground Poe and terex hash it out, a great scene even Toho would be proud of. Once the creatures are done and dusted, Terex and Poe reach a civil agreement to leave each other alone for the time being. Terex isn’t quite done with him yet though
The covers for each issue are superb, Once again Phil Noto weaves his magic with every single issue. This is displayed once again with issue 4 where we see Poe dealing with a hutt on more clue’s to Luke Skywalker’s whereabouts. Speaking of Hutts, they finally have an easy way of getting around now using mechanical legs (did the hutts take a trip to the Mojoverse?). Issue 4 begins with Poe strung upside down being pushed into some sort of deal with a Hutt named Grakkus. This series really likes to utilize the use of flashbacks or going back a bit earlier before where the actual issue begins. Here we see Black Squadron return to D’Qar (the secret base of the resistance as seen in The Force Awakens) after their showdown with the First Order and Agent Terex on Ovanis, celebrating their small victory. Turns out, Lor San Tekka was friends with the Hutt called Grakkus who is a big collector of “force related things, jedi stuff”as Poe refers to it. Grakkus is being held in a prison and has been there since the days of the empire, Black Squadrons new mission is to fly to Megalox Beta and get some clues out of Grakkus. We haven’t seen the Hutts in any of the new films yet but its great they are back in the new expanded universe. Poe and his squad are told by the Warden ,Luta, that the prison has no walls, only an energy field as the gravity on the planet is so strong outside the field that it can crush someone under ten times their own weight, this part comes in handy later on in the story. The squad gets double crossed by the prison gaurds who try to bribe them out of 1 million credits, once they’re left down there by themselves, all out chaos ensures. Poe and the rest of the crew finally reach the home of Grakkus and a few other hutts. Once inside we briefly see Grakkus’s collection which houses a Rancor head on the wall. In one of the best moments of the entire series so far, we are treated to a scene very reminiscent of when Lando betrays Han, Chewie and Leia to the empire, as Grakkus tells Poe that he knows why he has come as Lor San Tekka seems to be a very wanted man these days. Agent Terex has already beaten them to the prison planet and is an old friend of Grakkus. This puts everyone in a bit of a sitation as Grakkus tells the 2 men that he will give the clues to Lor San Tekka’s location to the man who can break him out of the prison, once again pitting Poe and Terex against each other.
Straight onto issue 5, we see Terex leaving Grakkus’s home, much to the surprise of the rest of Black Squadron. Cut to Poe alerting BB-8 that operation upside is a go. This issue puts a bit of focus on BB-8 and a few of the other astromech droids and gives them something to do in the story. Terex has a plan to get off the gravity intensified prison using 3 other inmates and Poe and his friends are still trying to work out their next move. A prison riot breaks out right at the door step of Grakkus’s home and all that seperates Black Squadron and the other inmates is a wall. BB-8 has his own share of trouble as he comes up against a big security droid. Leaving the last page with BB-8 pulling out his little flame torch. I really enjoyed this part of the story, it raised the stakes, Black Squadron has no blasters and theres a swarm of thugs attacking the compound, meanwhile Terex has the upper hand with the help of 3 other crime lords residing in the prison. We haven’t really seen Poe and his friends in a situation like this before.
The next issue opens with black squadron fending off the other inmates with whatever they can while trying to persuade grakkus to let them back into his home. Up above the planet in the prison control centre, BB-8 takes out the security droid with a bit of quick thinking and electricity, here begins the plan that Poe alerted BB-8 about in the previous issue, Operation upside. BB-8 sucessfully pulls it off as the prisons gravity field is shut down and everyone that isn’t a member of Black Squadron is pushed onto the floor, unable to stand up due to the heavy weight of the planet’s intense gravity. Terex is caught in this trap but also has something up his sleeve, he calls down his ship the Carrion Spike (here’s a bit of trivia: this ship was previously owned by Grand Moff Tarkin from A New Hope) and gets a droid to come and collect him and place him on the starship which has its own gravity field making Terex unaffected by the force of the heavy gravity. Terex seems like one of the best minor villains that has ever appeared in a star wars story, there’s just no stopping this guy, he’s definitely a problem solver. Back in the control centre, Poe promises Grakkus safe passage on one of the escape shuttles while the warden rushes to get the gravity field operating again as to not lose too many inmates otherwise she’ll be out of a job. In one of his most daring attacks yet, terex flies his ship right through the command centre and straight after Black Squadron’s X-wings and the escape shuttles. Poe changes his mind about engaging the enemy first and launches an attack on Terex’s ship which sends him fleeing after the ship takes a lot of damage. Back on D’qar, General Organa asks Poe how did Terex know where to go after the crèche did not tell him about Grakkus and the prison world. Seems a traitor might be amongst them. Captain Phasma makes another brief appearance showing her disappointment with terex not being able to capture Poe or get the answers needed to find Lor San Tekka’s location.
Issue 7 picks up with Poe visiting an old friend who says she has something important to tell Poe about the First Order, this new character called Suralinda Javos also happens to be a journalist looking for a big story. The story goes on a bit of a tangent and gets away from the whole Poe/Terex looking for Lor San Tekka arc, it feels like a one off where we see Poe manipulated by an old friend to try and find out where the secret resistance base is so she can make a story about it. There was a part of the story where Poe was held captive by storm troopers and in a cocky attempt to get out of it he tries to fight one of the troopers in hand to hand combat but they don’t buy it in which Poe replies “eh it was worth a shot”, it felt like a funny nod to when Poe first meets Kylo Ren and asks “so who talks first?”. Issue 7 also has a change in the art style as Phil Noto only illustrated the cover, Angel Unzueta was the artist for this issue and I could tell straight away from the first page that the artist was different.
The current issue which is 8 opens with a frustrated Poe discussing with BB-8 who the traitor in the resistance or Black Squadron might be. We also see another fantastic flash back from years ago which sees the end of the battle of Jakku, an event which happened a bit after the events of Return Of The Jedi. Agent Terex was a storm trooper in this battle and witnessed it first hand. There’s also a really great easter egg for Rogue One in issue 8, keep your eye’s peeled for it. C3-PO makes an appearance in this issue and informs Poe of a new secret mission that General Organa wants him to go on, the resistance have received information on the location of Supreme Leader Snoke (the manacing new villain from The Force Awakens) but only Poe, threepio and another pilot are to embark on this mission to see if their intel is correct. This issue was without a doubt the best one that’s been released so far from the series in my opinion. It finally got to the nitty gritty and showed us some really cool back story on Agent Terex. This is without a doubt the best Star Wars comic series on the market at the moment, its kept my interest for this long and I’m keen to see where the next few issues take the series. Can’t wait for the next issue!