The Mandalorian #7
CHAPTER 7: THE RECKONING
Continuing his long journey, Mando contacted his old friend Ran Malik looking for work. Mando was then added to a crew consisting of ex-Imperial Migs Mayfeld, the Devaronian Burg, the droid pilot Zero and the Twi’lek Xi’an to rescue Xi’an’s brother Qin. After battling through security droids, Mando was double-crossed by the team.
Having made his escape, Mando defeated each of the crew members, leaving them imprisoned on the New Republic prison ship, and borught Qin back to Ran for pyament. Now Mando travels onward with the Child….
Writer: Rodney Barnes
Penciller: Georges Jeanty
Inker: Dexter Vines, Wayne Faucher
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Cover artist: Steve McNiven
Editor: Mark Paniccia
Publication date: January 11, 2023
We’re racing towards the conclusion of the debut season of The Mandalorian, and all the threads that have been building in the background begin to come together in this episode / issue as Greef Karga contacts Mando to make a proposition. With the Client tightening his grip on Nerarro and Karga convinved that he’ll stop at nothing to get the child, he suggests returnign to the planet to join forces and achieve their mutual goal of taking out the Client and clearing Mando’s name with the Bounty Hunters Guild, allowing him and the child to go their way in peace. Mando heads back to Sorgan to make an offer to Cara Dune to join him in taking down the Imperial. As a former Rebel, she readily agrees, and so they head offplanet, aiming for Arvala-7 and the Ugnaught Kuiil, who has repaired IG-11 into a passive serving droid. He insists that the droid is not a threat, and so IG-11 is tasked with protecting the child while Kuiil loads up the blurrgs and they leave the planet.
Onboard, Mando and Cara armwrestle, something the child sees as a threat to Din, and uses the Force to choke Cara before Mando tells him to stop. They make plans before planet fall on Nevarro where they meet Karga and his security detail and start the long walk into town, setting up camp as night falls. As they talk the camp is attacked by two huge, dragon-like winged creatures, clawing at the blurrgs and wounding Greef, their poison acting fast. The child holds his arm, using the Force to heal him, an act that has huge repurcuussions as the next morning Greef turns on his security detail, admitting to Mando that his plan was to kill them and take the child, but after being saved he couldn’t go through with it.
They quickly concoct an alternate plan. Cara is to take Mando in as a captured bounty, while the child goes back to the ship with Kuiil. Entering the town, they are led to the client, who insists on seeing the child just as Moff Gideon contacts the client and opens fire on the cantina, killing him and his guards. They watch as Gideon lands in his modified TIE Fighter, and see two speeder bikes catch up with Kuill and the child just as they reach the Razor Crest, gunning the Ungaught down and taking the child.
We end with Kuill’s smoking corpse, next to a dead Blurrg and wait for the 8th and final issue of the first seasons adaptation, and while there’s some well-judged framing choices the issue again suffers for the lack of narrative boxes explaining who the characters are, what planet we’re on and so on. Certainly there would be a gap in collections without this (we’re still waiting for our The Rise of Skywalker adaptation by the way) but as we’ve said before, something needs to change if the second season adaptation (hopefully sometime before 2025) is of value to more than just the speculator market.
