STAR WARS — Everyone’s Bad Day Is Good

I’ll be honest folks, when it comes to the comics world of Star Wars I’ve been lacking. In my early youth I’d pick up the Marvel books on occasion between Empire and Jedi to get my Star Wars fix (though I would wonder why they were hanging out with a giant green bunny), and picking up a random issue here and there before the prequels hit. In my mind, the comics really weren’t capturing all the spirit of the movies. Shadows of the Empire came close, and there was always the risk of reading something that I loved only to see it changed later on by Lucas. That and quite honestly, the stories about characters that aren’t part of the trilogies never really grabbed me.

Now Dark Horse gives us a new series with the classic characters with stories between the movies, and it’s what I’ve been wanting to see beyond the movies.

In Issue three what do we have? Welp, we have everyone except for one guy having a bad day. Leia is having to juggle heading up a Black Ops team that’s supposed to find a new base after the Battle of Yavin and root out a possible Imperial spy and reprimand Luke for his actions with fellow pilot Prithi. Is Leia suspicious of Prithi being a spy or jealous of the friendship she has with Luke? Han Solo and Chewie are pinned down by stormtroopers on Coruscant after a secret mission to get weapons goes bad, and on the Dark Side, Darth Vader is starting his “demotion” mission overseeing the second Death Star while his replacement, Colonel Bircher, is getting ready to kiss some Emperor hiney, with an attack on the Rebels with the new TIE Interceptors.

So why am I digging this? To me, this a great supplement to the characters and the motivations launched in the movies. Writer Brian Wood is giving us Luke and Leia mourning the loss of friends and family as they can while trying to stay a step ahead on the Empire. Not to mention that we see a complex relationship with Luke and Leia. The two of them have to walk a tightrope of being close friends, but also having to follow a chain of command with Luke having to follow the orders that Leia hands out. Han is reluctantly, but with his own cocky manner, accepting his role as a member of the Alliance. And Darth Vader, let’s face it, you do have anger for the guy, but you also have pity. The poor guy loses a space station to a cocky kid, and now loses his command to an upstart Colonel.

Granted, all of this is taking place before Empire, so we know that Vader will be back to force choking folks soon, but the sooner he does it to Colonel Bircher the better. At least he still makes officers sweat and tremble in his presence. Another good thing? Lack (more or less) of Boba Fett! True, we do see Slave 1 chase Han for a little bit last issue, but that’s all we’ve seen of the baddest bounty hunter in the galaxy. I do like the character, don’t get me wrong, but it seems like the guy (Boba or Jango for that matter) gets shoehorned into almost everything Star Wars related! He just pops up for a moment to show how rough it’s gonna be for Han now not only wanted by the Empire, but dealing with that pesky price on his head from Jabba the Hutt.

One other thing that I have to point out that I enjoy about this book is the art. One of my pet peeves with a book based on licensed characters with a famous likeness that an artist will try too hard in the book to get portrait style art of the characters, and more often than not it looks like the characters had some kind of botched plastic surgery that takes away from the story. With artist Carlos D’Anda, he’s capturing the basic likeness of Luke, Leia, and the gang and not having to look like Mark Hamill or Carrie Fisher. The job of capturing the likeness is being handled just fine by Alex Ross with his cover work. I wouldn’t say that it’s his best work; the first two covers are great, but almost a little too busy. With issue #3, he seems to have the cover a little calmer, and the pic of next issues cover on the last page has me drooling to see it full sized!

My hat’s off to Dark Horse with this one. When it comes to the Star Wars books, there is still much gold to be mined telling stories between the movies. True, we do know the eventual fate of these characters (or do we now that we know Disney is gearing up for more movies), but this series proves that there is still lots more ground that can be covered.