One of the highlights of The High Republic Era in Star Wars has been Daniel Jose Older’s High Republic Adventures comic. The all ages comic from Dark Horse (and, for Phase I, IDW) has been tremendous from the jump. The new #1 for Phase III, Trials of the Jedi, delivers high quality once again.

The High Republic Adventures #1 picks up, like most of Phase III, in the year following the destruction of Starlight Beacon. So many Jedi have been killed by the Nihil or are missing (and, most presumed dead). We find our former-padawan-now-knight Qort on the planet Eriadu with friend-of-the-Jedi Zeen Mrala who is singing a Corellian funeral song in honor of those they’ve lost.

Then she’s reminded it’s been an entire year since Starlight fell. That’s when we learn our other Jedi friends from Phase I Farzala Tarabal, Buckets of Blood (Torben Buck), and Lula Talisola are among the missing.

Through his run, Older has always managed to give THR fans exactly what they want before just ripping it away again. I say that to say that he gave THR fans exactly what they wanted in this first issue, so I’m pretty confident that he’s going to make us pay for it at some point.

That’s how these things go, right? For now though… That ending!

This is another tremendous book from artist Harvey Tolibao. He has been in amazing form on this run, and I never have a concern about how the illustrations are doing to look in this series.

The entire team is still clicking on all cylinders.