By Keigen Rea — Welcome to the end of the year edition of Rereads! I love doing end of year lists, so I’m using this space to do that, but I didn’t want it to just be my end of year list, because that didn’t quite fit what I want Rereads to be. So, there’s a small twist.

The books featured won’t necessarily be my favorite books of the year; they’ll be books that I wasn’t totally sure I liked the first time around, or they'll be books I want to revisit before I make my final favorites of the year list. Naturally, that means all of these books won’t actually be on my list, and I might even dislike some of them! As always, though, I hope I come away liking these books more than I did before.

This time I will be Rereadsing Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren by Charles Soule, Will Sliney, Guru-eFX and VC’s Travis Lanham, edited by Mark Paniccia, with assistant editor Tom Groneman. Published by Marvel comics. And SFSX (Safe Sex) by Tina Horn, Michael Dowling, Steve Wands, Chris O’Halloran, Jen Hickman, Alyssa Eleftheriou, with guest artist Alejandra Gutiérrez and editing and design by Lauren Mccubbin, published by Image Comics.

Why Kylo Ren?

Why indeed.

I did not like this series the first time I read it. The reasons are many: I wasn’t super into the art, I don’t like Snoke, I think this is too important a story to be shoved into a four-issue mini, and the Knights of Ren are some of my least favorite characters in Star Wars canon.

So why give it another chance?

It’s Star Wars. I like Star Wars, even the, very very large amounts of bad Star Wars. At worst, it’s on the same level as films that I still love: bad. At best it’s actually good Star Wars!

Pre-reread thoughts

I dislike the Knights of Ren so much, but I will try to see their value! Also, I’ll try to focus on the storytelling rather than the aesthetics of the art.

The Rise of Kylo Ren

Did I term search myself saying phrases “like” and “Star Wars”? Of course I did!

I think a lot of my problems with this story still exist, but fwoof I really enjoyed reading this, for all the Star Wars reasons.

I think the thing I’m glomming onto the most this time is the interesting way that Ren (not Kylo Ren, the previous Ren of the Knights of Ren [i guess]) talks about the force. Since so much of Star Wars is focused on the films, particularly the OT, the idea of the force isn’t really all that structured or even talked about. It’s a field that penetrates all things. It’s not powers, but it gives the Jedi their powers. It’s a “religion,” albeit, an extinct one. Here, Ren just calls it the shadow. He goes around with his pals, growing the size of the shadow users so they can do some more shadow stuff. Which is odd, because they clearly know about the Jedi, since they found a temple. Basically, I’m always interested in Star Wars that looks at the idea of the force and doesn’t treat it like it’s one thing to everyone, when the reality is, I think it should be more like religions around the world, with their various sects with slightly or extremely different beliefs. This is only a hint at this, sure, but it scratched that itch all the same.

The real highlight in the series, though, is the tragic titular figure himself, Kylo “Ben Solo” Ren. Of the characters in the sequel trilogy, Ren (yeah, the one from the movies now) is the one who got to be the most interesting from start to finish. This was largely due to Adam Driver’s pretty great acting, but I think it was him feeding off the good parts of the script which then fed back into the script. I know there’s a whole bunch of controversy surrounding the ST, and even praising Driver and Ren is probably at least a little bit controversial! But I stand by it. Driver was able to take what Lucas and Hayden Christiansen tried to do in the prequels and weld it to something that was actually good and nuanced and felt purposeful, and I thoroughly enjoy it! Which is all to say, this comic takes everything that was good there and runs with it, keeping more or less everything good, and keeping almost none of the bad.

I mean, it is Star Wars, so there’s gotta be some bad, y’know? That’s not what this is about, but it’s still true!

With all that groundwork laid, here’s my take: this book still doesn’t quite do a good job explaining Ben’s fall to the dark side, but it’s definitely better than what Revenger of the Sith does with Anakin. I don’t think this book has enough time to really portray Ben’s transformation into Ren, but it does show that attacking the temple wasn’t the end of the change, but the beginning of it, and it sells everything much better. Just because he did one wrong thing doesn’t mean he’s completely fallen, and the following events do a better, if not good, job of showing him eventually give up on being good. Since it was poised the way it was, it also does a fairly good job sowing the seeds of his eventual redemption, which I still don’t feel was earned, but it was a pretty good attempt.

So hey, I liked this a lot more this time!

Why SFSX?

So, SFSX is actually unique in Rereads because it breaks the cardinal rule: I never actually finished the series! I quit after issue five for some reason that I don’t quite remember. I was really fond of the first three issues, but four and five disappointed me in some way, so I stopped reading. So, this reread will focus on figuring out why I did that and then reading to the end. I have read the majority of the book, so I’m only half breaking the rule, but also, I made the rule, so I can break it!

Pre-reread thoughts

This series has an oddly high number of artists for an Image book with only seven issues. I’m excited to see how this affects the story overall. Also reading the end will be fun!

SFSX

Alright, that was certainly something!

To start off, this book is one of the most gorgeous comics I’ve read. Cover to cover is full of the prettiest art, from Lotay to Hickman, just an absolutely beautiful art team. And yes, there are a bunch of artists, and they aren’t all super similar, but for whatever reason, they tonally go together. Can’t even blame the color art really, as even they changed, but I think they all did a good job at trying to look uniform.

Where the art shines, though, I’m not as impressed with the writing. It’s an interesting book, really. It sets itself up as The Handmaid’s Tale, but more inclusive, and a comic, and I think it shows, down to the antagonists who claim to have progressive views. In some ways, I think it really excels in trying to do that, especially with it’s inclusion. People with various disabilities and those of marginalized genders, different orientations, and obviously various kinks, are all accounted for, and they don’t feel like they’re just checking them off of a list, but they feel like they belong in the story. All of this is organic, and maybe most of all, sexy. Like many horny comics, I do think it gets more lost in the plot than it really needs to be, but that’s less a flaw and more just related to the whole, Handmaid’s Tale of comics, thing.

Where this doesn’t work for me, is the tonal whiplash. One panel will have characters being tortured, or held at gunpoint, and the next will have characters making quips and referencing memes to each other, and it doesn’t land for me. Being a sex-positive, inclusive Handmaid’s Tale is awesome, especially with trans rep on the page and behind it, but the reason Handmaid’s Tale works for me is that it leans into the despair of the situation. I understand that to some people it just becomes torture porn and that’s not for them, but the problem here is that there is literal torture porn and I don’t think the story sells it as such. I also totally understand that maybe the intention was to not let the character fall into despair and for this to not be another tortured queer story, but uh, it really is and I think having the characters not treat the plot seriously betrays the tone and a lot of the world building in the process. Overall it’s still enjoyable, especially for the beautiful art, but I just don’t think the tone was consistent enough for me to actually enjoy the story.

The pacing was also a bit all over the place, especially the concluding three issues. They worked fine, but a seven issue arc is already really weird, but it felt like a lot of the beats that were hit in those issues were really decompressed. Again, not really terrible, but definitely weird. To its benefit, though, I love the third issue that acts as an interlude. Very cool and fun in a bunch of ways!

Unfortunately, though, this (partial) reread only made me better realize why I dropped the book, and I don’t think I was wrong to.

This week’s rereads are dedicated to Books with Pictures (https://bookswithpictures.com/) one of the very best shops in the word! They’re personal shopping is very cool, and a great way to get something new!

And also to the LAAB Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/posts/44902348) which is deserving of money if only for the excellent content they put into the world, let alone the fact that the Patreon puts that content in front of you.

That’s it for this rereads, thanks for reading! Next up will be Fence and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen!

Keigen Rea is off of work+school on Sunday. Find him @prince_organa being happy about that.