Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Search Part 1 (2013)

Author: Gene Luen Yang | Illustrator: Gurihiru | Page Count: 76

...and if you can't trust your family, who can you trust?

Alright then, now we're getting somewhere. The series is finally coughing up some details about Zuko's mother as a flashback of her story is woven between the present search for her. The circumstances of which force Zuko to conditionally release Azula from her imprisonment to aid in the search hindered not just by being Azula, but also by her still-damaged mental state.

The art is top notch and has fixed the weird face morphing that Zuko had in the previous comics. The story is interesting, but that is mostly due to the mystery of Ursa being slowly unraveled rather than an engaging plot. This being only the first part, it feels more like an exposition dump at times. The better parts are about the nature of family in both the text and in the contrasting sibling pairs of Sokka & Katara and that of Zuko & Azula. Zuko proves once again to be the more interesting of the characters though the whole is of course less because of a lack of Toph. And the short length is still irksome given they could have easily put all parts in one trade, but then of course you would only have to buy it once. Bastards.

4 Involuntary rape-face out of 5