I've never read many Star Wars comics, nor really wanted to. Something about the medium is just annoying to me - I find reading comics to be quite unnatural. My first inclination upon seeing a page of comics is to read all the text from left to right, top to bottom. And I read quicky. I completely skip the pictures in this first subconscious run, and as I haven't figured out the conventions of comic dialogue order, I don't even absorb the written content in a chonological manner. So as you can see, reading comics just isn't natural, and I have to make an effort to look at each box/picture individually, read *only* that text, and try to read it in order. Otherwise, as you can imagine, the story makes absolutely no sense. I also have to try and note any details on the character drawings, so I know who is who - because I'm not usually visual like that.

However... I recently bought my first real Star Wars comics (I'm not including Clone Wars Adventures, because they seemed more like a spin-off of the Clone Wars cartoon series than true comics to me - at least, that's what I told myself at the time! heh) - Clone Wars Volume 3: Last Stand on Jabiim. By hanging out on SW forums, I tend to absorb opinions and suggestions of others, and a lot of people have mentioned that this one was amazing. So I thought "what the heck", blissfully ignored my rule to myself to not start buying comics (much like I ignored my rule to not buy action figures a few months ago), and topped up my Amazon order (of Dark Nest: The Joiner King and Cloak of Deception) with that trade paperback. I got it yesterday and read it all. It was so good!!! I loved it. Despite my comic-reading 'difficulties', I was getting the hang of it by the end. And I really really loved the story and the artwork!

It was also nice to actually see Alpha, as I've heard a lot about him. He's kind of a punk though, hehe. (And I mean that in the best possible way!) Allow me to quote:

Anakin: "No executions, Alpha. He's wounded. We can't end this civil war just by killing half the planet."
Alpha: "We'll see..."
Obi-Wan: "Anakin is right. The Jabiimi rebels will only fighter harder if we teach them to hate us!"
Alpha: "Unless we also teach them to fear us..."

and...

Alpha: "We could end this quickly, if you'd only listen to my advice."
Obi-Wan: "We are not assassinating every surviving political leader on this planet."
Alpha: "You're just going to end up killing them eventually."

LOL! That made me grin.

I'm learning many of the 'rules' of comics pertaining to what to read first, though I'm still not sure of a few things (like when there's a big picture and 2 or more smaller pictures inset in the big one, do you read the big one first or the small ones?)... so that's cool too.

So now I want to know what happens next... It says the story continues in Volume 5 (dunno what's in Volume 4 then) ... hmm. *adds to Amazon list*