REVIEW: Star Wars #8

Star Wars #8

It’s always great to see a writer develop a new character and make him or her memorable with an agenda. That’s how I feel about Commander Zahra, a once-promising protégé of Grand Moff Tarkin, Zahra blames Leia for the destruction of the Death Star, and Tarkin’s subsequent demise. In her mind, she has been planning her revenge for years without the ability to put it into play. That is…until now.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the storyline being after Empire, this feels more like a story that should take place after A New Hope, especially with Lando and Chewie still hanging out with the Rebels. Shouldn’t they be on their way to Tattoine to save Han and start setting Luke’s plan into action like the end of Empire suggests? In my opinion, this was a very poor decision on Marvel’s part, but here we are stuck in the post Empire timeline.

They should just put in a disclaimer “These stories do not fall into canon.” Then I believe that everyone would be okay with it. I know several people who have stopped reading the Star Wars titles completely because they mess with canon too much. Yet the writers continue to create good stories, but in some cases, it’s a direct contraction to the movies, etc.

Vader is busy dealing with his own issues, so he decides to get the emperor to assign Zahra the job of hunting down the Rebels. She is shocked when Vader presents her with the opportunity, considering that Tarkin dented her file with a bad commendation after she failed a mission. Vader, however, is willing to overlook this because he knew how Tarkin distributed his punishments. Zahra, can now, finally, get what she desired after all of these years – vengeance on Leia.

The Empire boards Leia’s ship and Zahra taunts her by staying in the shadows and cutting her. Now that she has Leia alone, we think that there’s no stopping her from killing the princess, but then Luke shows up, standing atop a pile of defeated Stormtroopers. – This is a very cool scene, except that Luke has a yellow lightsaber. Yep, messing with canon again.

When her junior officer apologizes for losing Leia, Zahra confides that she wasn’t trying to kill Leia, but by getting that close to her, she is going to take away her hope. – Cheesy and cool simultaneously. This does have me wanting to come back to read more. I have to get over where it is in the timeline. If you can, check it out, it’s a pretty good read.

About Author

Frank Zanca

…began working in local television at the age of 22 when he became a Promotional Producer for Channel 9, the Orlando ABC affiliate. During this time he wrote and produced thirty-second spots for the newscast and syndicated shows such as Geraldo and Sally Jesse Raphael. Later he worked as a Production Assistant on NBC’s Gonzo Games and Dick Clark’s Sea World Summer Spectacular. Frank created and wrote his first comic book, which was distributed internationally under the name of Shadow Raven. For a number of years, Frank worked in Sales and then moved into Marketing where he became CFO and later President of two Independent marketing firms that were later sold for several million dollars. Recently Frank helped design Shadow Raven: the Combat Card Game, which was distributed internationally and has written the Shadow Raven novel (to be released next year). Frank is currently producing Shadow Raven: Fading Thoughts, a thirty-minute pilot, which is designed to become a feature film or television series.

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