Star Wars: Poe Dameron Vol. 1 - Black Squadron

by Charles Soule

[Quirky Cat]

Black Squadron is set before The Force Awakens, and further details the efforts Poe Dameron went through in an attempt of finding Lor San Tekka (remember; he doesn’t actually succeed in this until the beginning of the movie). From this we can safely assume that Poe’s adventures will always swing back to trying to find Luke – at least until the series catches up with the movies (which I’m not sure if they’re intending to do or not).



As mentioned above, pretty much the whole point of this volume (and I would guess future volumes?) is to track down Lor San Tekka and get the final map piece from him. This is clearly easier said than done, as it causes an awful lot of trouble for Poe Dameron and his team.
Speaking of Poe’s team, the Black Squadron (I would love to know if they chose this name for any particular reason, perhaps to imply stealth?), there appear to be quite a lot of them, but most of them are unnamed (which is a shame, I’d love to know more of the droids names, if nothing else – an odd preference, I know). Among the named characters on Poe’s team are Snap Wexley, Kare Kin, L’ulo (love that name), and Oddy Muva. I wonder if having them named will increase their odds of survival. I’m assuming any that they don’t bother to introduce us to will die sooner rather than later, but that’s just the Red Shirt Rule in action.
Obviously when the main goal of the series is based off of something that occurs in the first five minutes of the movie, there’s quite a bit of fleshing out to do (not to mention events tacked on, for the sake of interest and time). Finding intel on Tekka is a lot harder than it initially appeared – which I suppose makes sense, since if it was easy the Empire likely would have succeeded by now. Still, there are a lot more adventures and events than I initially anticipated, which is saying something.
The first mission for Black Squadron takes them to an odd civilization, and the resulting battles are…confusing to say the least. I haven’t the faintest clue what sort of egg the Creche was protecting (and to be honest, I’m not even sure the egg needed their protection? It certainly didn’t appear to). Maybe I’m missing some vital Star Wars lore here, but it was just a bit odd, not to mention the scale of things was off-putting (larger than life, and no pun intended there).
The second mission was a bit more reasonable, at least. This one relied more on planning and politics (AKA bribery), which is more what I was hoping for in this series. Sure, things don’t go exactly as planned…but let’s be honest here, what Rebel plan has ever worked out perfectly? Exactly. On the bright side, seeing all the droids in action like that was a lot of fun (and don’t worry, BB-8 is one of them) – that was probably the highlight for me. But I think droids are adorable…so…there’s that.
I like Poe – or more accurately I want to like him. He’s a bit of a devil-may-care rogue-ish type, but he actually does care about stopping the Empire and protecting the people he cares about. Sometimes he’s too rash, and doesn’t think out his plans (or he’ll just assume that they’ll work) which is a bit frustrating to see, but on the whole he’s a good guy. I’ll be curious to see where this series ends up going, and how close to current continuity (movie wise that is) it’ll get.


For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks