Hallelujah we’re getting back into the Prequel Era! And not only that: it’s a largely unexplored area of the Prequels. Set several years after The Phantom Menace, Obi-Wan and Anakin #1 by Charles Soule and Marco Checchetto takes a closer look at the master/padawan team during a time when Anakin’s struggling to fit in to the Jedi Order and Obi-Wan’s struggling to do right by his young padawan.

There are some spoilers in this review.

After chatting with Soule, it came as no surprise to me that Palpatine appeared in this issue and, to be quite frank, it was a perfect fit. With the ten year jump between Episodes I and II, we missed a lot of the character relationship development between not only Anakin and Obi-Wan but also between Anakin and Palpatine. My hunch is that by the time this book ends, we’ll have a much firmer grasp on why Anakin was so easily swayed by Palpatine in the latter parts of the trilogy.

There’s also a great little character moment with Anakin back at the temple where he overhears two fellow padawans refer to him as a slave (although they mean to his emotions) and he flies off the handle. It’s a great bridge between the young kid on Tatooine and the angry teenager on Coruscant.

Soule weaves two storylines together from the past and the present. Obi-Wan and Anakin are on a mission responding to a distress call from the dead planet of Carnelion IV while in the past, they are at the Jedi Temple. It’s a nice way to get the best of both worlds.

On art front, Checchetto does many of the same good things that he did with Shattered Empire. Andres Mossa provides a rather pretty almost muted palette for the colors which really shines on the planet. Thankfully, Checchetto seems to have decided that Obi-Wan has yet to stumble into the Jedi mullet so we’re saved that particular stylish maneuver.

Obi-Wan and Anakin #1 gets a strong recommendation from me for fans of the Prequels and also for those who want to try and understand Anakin a little bit better.