The High Republic: Trail of Shadows #4 - Comic Review

Jedi Master Emerick Caphtor and private detective Sian Holt are stuck waiting … They have a lead on the Nihil Chadra-Fan doctor Kisma Uttersond who they know has some sort of information on The Great Leveler that they’ve been tasked to investigate. The High Republic: Trail of Shadows #4 sees them forced to sit and wait for their lead to pay off, their lead being another Chadra-Fan named Beesar Tal-Apurna who has taken to helping the Republic against the Nihil after someone deeply close to her died in a battle against the vile raiders. She finds Uttersond on her planet and follows him with the task of setting up a tracking beacon. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work out as well as planned, and instead she ends up boarding the ship and activating the beacon that way! With Beesar transmitting Uttersond’s location, the two investigators finally have cause to get up and go into action as they assemble a small group of fighters to go after the Nihil doctor. Unbeknownst to them, however, there’s much more going on with Uttersond than they realize, and they fly right into the middle of something bigger than they had ever expected!

Writer Daniel José Older crafts yet another beautiful, character driven, and often heartfelt issue in this miniseries with The High Republic: Trail of Shadows #4! The nice and unconventionally heroic Beesar is an incredible addition to the story. Channeling big vibes of Rose Tico from The Last Jedi, Beesar is a smaller scale character who doesn’t fit the model of “hero”, but knows she can use her own personal skills to still do her best to help whatever way she can. She’s sweet and also willing to take all the risks to help the Republic and avenge her fallen friend. The evolution of the main story is also quite great with Emerick and Sian attacking a Nihil ship and encountering some unexpected events, but that borders spoiler territory, so I’ll just leave it at that: a great fun well written issue!

The visual artistic team for The High Republic: Trail of Shadows #4 consists of artist Dave Wachter, colorist Giada Marchisio, and letterer VC’s Joe Sabino. Together they have created a wonderful companion to Older’s writing with their absolutely stunning art. The main standout of this issue, among many beautiful things, is the Chadra-Fan world where we find Uttersond and his family as well as Beesar sneaking around. It’s a beautiful and rich planet that feels so incredibly lived in that it’s almost like the readers are literally transported to the real location. Another fantastic piece I want to mention is the internal dialogue that bounces between Uttersond, with a purple thought bubble, and Beesar, her thought bubble being green, and occasionally their thoughts would sync up to be the same thing and the thought bubbles coloring would mesh together to show it’s coming from both of them. It’s a really neat touch that could have been done many ways, but this way is definitely the coolest. The coolest piece of this issue, however, delves deep into spoilers, but it needs to be mentioned that there’s a borderline horrifying moment near the end that consists of some of the most wild and beautiful artwork I’ve seen in a Star Wars comic to date!

The main cover art for The High Republic: Trail of Shadows #4 comes from artist David Lopez and is a great piece featuring a meditative Emerick with a menacing Arathab Fal, the Tarnab who’s been working with Uttersond, looming behind him. The first of two variant covers is done by Pasqual Ferry and Matt Hollingsworth and features a tense encounter between Arathab Fal and Uttersond with some gorgeous and rich colors. The second variant cover is from Valerio Giangiordano and Arif Prianto and boasts the most menacing depiction of Arathab Fal these covers have to offer!

All in all, The High Republic: Trail of Shadows #4 is yet another piece of the incredible wave of The High Republic media that demands to be read. It doesn’t push the story too far, but it brings in some absolutely wonderful character moments throughout the entire issue and some breathtaking artwork overall. So fire up your Jedi Vector and fly on down to your local comic shop to pick up an issue today!