Joe Books' second Rebels comic is Star Wars: Rebels - Path of the Jedi Cinestory Comic. Like the other books in this series, this 384 page fumetti-style book is priced at $14.99 and contains five episodes from the Rebels animated series:
Empire Day (season 1 episodes 8)
Gathering Forces (season 1 episode 9)
Path of the Jedi (season 1 episode 10)
Vision of Hope (season 1 episode 12)
Call to Action (season 1 episode 13)
Star Wars: Rebels - Path of the Jedi Cinestory Comic a - Joe Books, U.S. (November 2017)
Joe Books' final Star Wars comic offering is their third Rebels Cinestory comic. Star Wars: Rebels - Maul Cinestory Comic is a massive 384 page book priced at $14.99, containing five memorable episodes from the Rebels animated series:
Twilight of the Apprentice (season 2 episodes 21-22)
The Holocrons of Fate (season 3 episode 3)
Visions and Voices (season 3 episode 11)
Twin Suns (season 3 episode 20)
This fumetti-style comic contains panels that are stills from the episodes and, while the pages are in color, this book suffers from the muddy look that previous Cinestory offerings had. Even so, the price is not bad for the content. We get all the stories from the Rebels animated series that feature the character Maul, introduced and seemingly killed in The Phantom Menace movie and brought back in The Clone Wars animated series. (Interestingly, the idea of reviving Maul was first presented in a comic book, Dark Horse's Star Wars: Visionaries original graphic novel). The final story in the book, Twin Suns, is particularly powerful as it contains the final confrontation between Maul and Obi-Wan Kenobi in the desert of Tatooine.
Star Wars: Rebels - Maul Cinestory Comic a - Joe Books, U.S. (February 2018)
Sadly, there were more Star Wars Cinestory comics solicited but never published due to Joe Books going bankrupt in 2019.
The collector's edition of the Star Wars: A New Hope Cinestory Comic contains the same 376 pages of story the standard edition does plus 33 pages of extra content. This edition is priced at $29.99 and has a hardcover instead of a softcover. It was published by Joe Books in November 2017, a month after the standard edition.
Star Wars: A New Hope Cinestory Comic Collector's Edition a - Joe Books, U.S. (November 2017)
Joe Books has released their second Star Wars Cinestory comic, an adaptation of A New Hope. Like their first comic, this softcover graphic novel is massive, with 376 pages of story. The comic contains images from the current version of the movie, the 2004 DVD release. This book is priced at $19.99 which is $5 more than the Rebels Cinestory comic. This comic is in color and the images are slightly sharper than the first Cinestory comic, although the photos are still dark. There is another hardcover "Collector's Edition" of this book that will be released in November and an adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back is already pre-orderable on Amazon.
Star Wars: A New Hope Cinestory Comic a - Joe Books, U.S. (October 2017)
The front cover is the artwork from the Star Wars Special Edition poster and along the bottom are images from the movie. The 40th anniversary logo is opposite of the title.
Star Wars: A New Hope Cinestory Comic a - Joe Books, U.S. (October 2017) back cover
The back cover has a brief description of the story and the 40th anniversary logo is more prominent. Disney and Lucasfilm logos are shown along with the Joe Books logo. The background is a photo of some generators near the Lars Homestead.
Joe Books is a Canadian publisher that was founded in 2014 by the former Vice President of Boom! Studios, Adam Fortier. To date, they have published only licensed material comprised mostly of comics and mostly for Disney. Their first published offering is a Cinestory adaptation of the Disney movie Frozen. A Cinestory comic is Joe Books' brand name for a fumetti, which is a particular type of comic which used photographs or stills and marries them with word balloons to tell the story. Tokyopop had published fumetti's for the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies as well as a Clone Wars issue under the brand Cine-Manga which Dark Horse published in the U.S. in 2007 and 2008. Joe Books started out publishing Cinestory comics based on Disney animated properties and collections of previously published Disney comics. In 2016, they began publishing original content comics for several Disney properties. In 2016, they also published several text novels based on Marvel superhero characters. In July 2016, they solicited a graphic novel, Star Wars: Rebels Cinestory Comic, but that graphic novel never materialized and orders were canceled.
It turns out Joe Books still had plans to release the Rebels Cinestory comic, they just were slow on getting it ready for publication. (Apparently, this is a common problem with Joe Books.) Just this month, they published Star War: Rebels - Spark of Rebellion Cinestory. It is a massive 378 page softcover graphic novel and measures 6 inches by 9 inches which is slightly smaller than the dimensions of a standard comic. This book adapts the first five episodes of the Rebels animated series to comics and more Rebels Cinestory comics are planned.
The book is priced at $14.99 and you learn why such a massive book has this low price when you see the content. The pages are in color, but the transfer of the stills from the cartoon to the pages produces a very muddy look and the bright colors found on the television show are lost on the page. The panels are dark and grainy and on many pages you wouldn't know the comic was printed in color. I love the idea behind these Cinestory comics, but it is a shame that such a colorful show could not be captured better on these pages. Still, for only $14.99, it is not a terrible way to recapture the animated episodes and hopefully the printing process improves with subsequent issues.
Star Wars: Rebels - Spark of Rebellion Cinestory Comic a - Joe Books, U.S. (July 2017)Star Wars: Rebels - Spark of Rebellion Cinestory Comic a - Joe Books, U.S. (July 2017) back cover
Interestingly, Joe Books is now the fourth publisher of comics in the United States after Marvel, Disney-Lucasfilm Press, and IDW. Unfortunately, the graphic novel was not re-solicited by Discount Comic Book Service, so I had to purchase my copy off of Amazon. In addition to more Rebels Cinestory comics, Amazon is soliciting both a softcover and hardcover Cinestory comic of the original Star Wars movie.
