Star Wars # 5
As I mentioned in some of my previous reviews of the Star Wars titles (which include this one) Darth Vader, Bounty Hunters, and Doctor Aphra, Marvel is doing a good job with them. As good as Dark Horse? The jury is still out on that one. I do prefer the art in the Marvel books than in the Dark Horse Star Wars titles. They do attempt to get the characters’ faces as close to the actors’ as possible.
I still have no idea why they jumped the timeline from between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back – to now between Empire and Return of the Jedi. The reason I’m having a big problem with this jump (which is why the issue numbers restarted back to one) is because there’s very little time between those two movies in comparison to after A New Hope. Not to mention that even a non-fan knows that Han was frozen in carbonite and taken to Jabba’s palace by Boba Fett. For all Luke and Leia know, he was defrosted and is being tortured. At the end of the movie, Lando and Chewie leave in the Falcon to go find him.
Now, let’s talk about this Star Wars run of comics. Lando leaves with Luke and Leia to Bespin to find Luke’s lightsaber. Huh?! I do not like when comics, based on movies, decide to mess with cannon. Throughout this entire run, whenever I read an issue, I have an itch in the back of my brain saying, “Don’t they care about what’s happening to Han?” In fact, we know that Luke does not complete his Jedi training, because he returns to Dagobah, where he tells Yoda exactly that.
Despite that huge continuity problem, I do like the stories they’re creating, but they really need to jump the storyline to after Return of the Jedi as quickly as possible. For the other Star Wars titles, it’s not as big a deal, but with the ones dealing with Luke and Leia, it’s a major issue.
This one starts out with Luke bragging about destroying the Death Star to several bar patrons. This immediately made me say, “Wait a minute. Luke would never do that.” Thankfully, it wasn’t Luke, just someone pretending to be him to pick up some jobs by using his name. I thought that was pretty clever of the writer. Unfortunately, he turns around to see Vader, who is searching for Luke. Needless to say, that guy will never be pretending to be anyone ever again.
Meanwhile, Luke and R2 go searching for a Jedi on a fishing planet (and here’s where the cannon problem comes in). The Jedi locks him in a sewer type prison, where the water is rising. Luke uses the force to halt the rising water, passing the test the Jedi had constructed. She tells him about Order 66, where all of the Jedi were hunted and killed, and is about to release him, until she reads his thoughts. Uh oh. And learns that Luke is Vader’s son.
After that revelation, forget about allowing Luke to go free. Instead, it’s drowning for our hero and a block of text reading, “To Be Continued.” I liked this issue a great deal, they just need a put an opening disclaimer that says these stories are not cannon and are more a “what if” and I’d be okay with it.
What do you think?
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