Comic Review – The Jedi Master and His Apprentice Investigate a Haunted Ship In “Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories – Qui-Gon”

This week saw the release of the new graphic novel Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories - Qui-Gon from Dark Horse Comics, and below are my brief recap and thoughts on this one-shot adventure.

Much like Marvel Comics’ Star Wars: Jedi Knights ongoing series that launched today, Hyperspace Stories: Qui-Gon is set prior to the events of the prequel trilogy while the title character’s Padawan learner Obi-Wan Kenobi is a young teen. It’s unclear which of these stories actually takes place chronologically first in the larger Star Wars timeline (Wookieepedia says it’s this one) but that doesn’t really matter. Our tale begins with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan (apparently traveling aboard the Consular-class Republic cruiser Radiant VII, which gets destroyed on-screen in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace) arriving at the site of a distress call they received. The source turns out to be a group of scientists who have discovered a centuries-old wreckage of a ship that once belonged to the dark-side Force sect known as the Brotherhood of the Ninth Door (see 2022’s Star Wars: The High Republic Phase II stories in which this religion was introduced).

It seems one of the archaeology team’s members has gone missing while investigating the contents of the ship, which is evidently so famously “haunted" that even space pirates have dared not enter across the hundreds of years it has been floating derelict. The two Jedi do find rathtar-like creatures called oclatar, but no ghosts at first. This prompts Qui-Gon to tell Obi-Wan a story about himself and his own Jedi Master Dooku seeking an artifact of the above-mentioned Brotherhood on the pilgrim moon of Jedha decades earlier. They encounter a presence there, and this prompts a pattern of further exploration of the ship and another story in which Qui-Gon met up with the same being once more as an adult. Eventually our heroes find themselves in the tomb of the founder of the Ninth Door cult, a man named Sarasti Thel. There, Qui-Gon is confronted yet again by Minakatso, one of the last remaining members of the sect, who– after a short skirmish– reveals that all he really wants is to destroy an ancient scroll before the dangerous information it contains falls into the wrong hands.

So through the course of this story, both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan learn the lesson of not judging a book by its cover, and resultingly they choose to let Minakatso go free in the end despite his affiliation with the dark side of the Force. It’s a nice story that spans a good chunk of Jinn’s lifetime, but unfortunately there’s not a whole lot more to it than that. We know that writer George Mann (Star Wars: Dark Legends) has an affinity for the creepier side of storytelling in A Galaxy Far, Far Away– not to mention the fact that he’s proven himself rather good at it time and again by now– but I’m struggling to find a genuinely worthwhile reason for this graphic novel to exist other than in celebration of the recent 25th anniversary of The Phantom Menace. I know it’s the first in a series of such super-sized (and quadruple-priced) stories on their way from Dark Horse, and my fear is that they’re all going to feel as ultimately inconsequential as this one does. Mann’s writing and the art by Andrea Mutti (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - War) are both serviceable, but of the two comic releases set during the same time period that saw publication this week, I have to say I was far more intrigued by the possibilities of Jedi Knights than Hyperspace Stories. But as always, I’ll be happy if and when I am proven wrong down the line.

Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories - Qui-Gon is available now wherever comic books are sold.