While I’m not yet ready to guarantee it, the NJOE review staff is going to attempt to have a new comic type review ready for each Thursday. On the weeks of any given month where Invasion! or Legacy comes out, you’ll get a review from corax and x-wingurly. On the other weeks, we’ll try to do a plethora of other material, including TPBs, Digests and so on. This week, I’m going to review the first digest inspired by the new Clone Wars series. To see what I thought, click on the link to read the rest of the review.

In the early days of the war, the Separatists seem to have the edge in the ability to make the machines of war - specifically, they hold more shipyard building facilities. The Jedi realize that if they can’t put a dent in the Separatists ability to build more ships, the Republic will be overrun before the war has even really begun. There is one world in particular that they’ve targeted, but it’s guarded by a defensive shield that only allows non-living material to get through (easy enough when you have a droid army). But they Jedi have Anakin and Obi-Wan, the two Jedi who are most likely to make an impossible situation succeed.

Unfortunately, the set up for the story is a little more interesting than the actual execution. Playing upon the ‘hey we’ve used this once, so why not overuse it instead of coming up with a new idea’ plotline - here the Jedi and the Clones are frozen in carbonite so as to fool the sensors as they pass through the shield. But they’re immediately discovered anyway - resulting in an explosion and a scattering of the carbonite frozen bodies. Ahsoka, who has disobeyed orders by coming on the mission, winds up being the first R2-D2 finds - and she winds up freeing the others, proving that it was total luck and R2 could have found anyone else and resulted in the same… er, I mean proving she should have been included in the mission all along.

And then we move on to an even more banal story about how the Separatists are using slaves, instead of droids, to build these ships - and the Jedi must do all they can to free the slaves who don’t really want to be free. But first they need to be betrayed by one of the slaves to the Separatists, before that same slave realizes what he’s done and then joins them in the ultimate fight to freedom at the end. To do that they have to blast through the enemy lines in a stolen ship, all while the Jedi are bombarding the planet so let’s not really worry about the whole non-living material shield thing all that much. Now that plot point just gets in the way.

I wish there were things that would make me recommend Shipyards of Doom. Like I said, the setup for the story was actually interesting, but it was all downhill from there. Way too predictable, way too many instances of ditching plot points because they’re no longer convenient. The art is very cartoony, like someone trying to convert the 3D series into a very limited budget 2D style cartoon (like you’d see with Powerpuff Girls or something) - which didn’t really work for me. I guess this series is maybe supposed to appeal to a younger audience; but even then, there are books I’d more strongly recommend. I’m afraid I can’t recommend this book unless you are truly desperate for another Clone Wars adventure.