Rating: 
Summary: Good Beginnings
Review: `Battleground: Tatooine' obviously goes back to the roots of the Star Wars saga. The Rogues are sent to Tatooine to try to get a grip on the large amounts of illegal weapon trading and gang warfare in the wake of Jabba the Hutt's death. This story is pretty important, as it introduces Winter and Devaroinian operative Kapp Dendo to the group, who will come to play roles later on in the second half of the series.Penciler John Nadeau begins his long stint with XWRS here, and starts off well. His work is a bit more defined here, although still maintains an overall `sketch'-type look to it. His machinery is, as usual, perfect and highly detailed, and his people well done as well. The colors by Perry McNamee are okay, but not up to the high standards set by David Nestelle, the series' usual colorist. `Battleground: Tatooine' was obviously influenced quite a bit by Stackpole's novels, as characters such as Ko'shak, Cazne'olan, Huff Darklighter, and Sixtus Quin make their debuts here, not to mention setting Elscol's role in `The Bacta War'. The script itself was done by Jan Strnad and was pretty well done, although not up to the standards of the series' other scripters. One of my qualms with this arc is the villain, Capt. Semtin. He would have been perfectly fine without those weird mechanical cat-like eyes and cybernetic implants, as they have no effect on the story itself. I guess after Loka Hask in `The Phantom Affair', they wanted to make all their villains deformed or something. It worked better with Hask. In any case, it sets up people like Kapp for later in the series and starts off the relationship between Tycho and Winter that picks up again in `Masquerade' and `Mandatory Retirement.' A good all-around read and recommended.
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