Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Star Wars #4
Marvel Comics
Aaron & Cassaday
"Star Wars" jumps into the next arc with a slower issue. For the most part, this comic is meeting up with events that were seen in the "Darth Vader" title while sending Luke off on a new adventure. The comic is a fine read but doesn't provide anything terribly new or different and the artwork has trouble rendering some of the characters. This is an okay read but is too familiar to be anything above average.
Darth Vader meets with Jabba. Whether you've read this in the Darth Vader comic or not, this scene shows the reader the negotiation. Aaron proves that he can hold true to the Vader dialogue from the films, which is the safe play. However, it isn't entirely clear why the Empire needs Jabba so badly (how many other planets or Hutts have resources?) nor why Jabba is so willing to roll over when he seems to holed up on such a backwater world. On the other hand, it plays well with the Empire's presence above Tatooine during the first film. This gets us to the repetitive nature of the story told here.
Vader, Jabba, Fett, Tatooine, Banthas, Sarlacc, and Rodian bounty hunters. There just isn't enough "new" in here. When you consider that five of the six films take place in some capacity on Tatooine, to go back there again for a comic is just too much. The villains are beloved characters, but there is something to be said for creating a new character (there is a new character in the back of the book) rather than recycling dialogue from the movies and using it in situations where they interact with each other. This is why the Darth Vader comic has a chance of being something special. It has new characters for Vader to interface with.
The counter to this is of course that the casual fan knows these characters and might like seeing Jabba threaten Vader or the pair on the sail barge together watching some sand entertainment. The comic is catering to the masses, which is fine but it suffers from lack of imagination as a result. Star Wars and imagination should be one-in-the-same.
In another turn of events, Luke takes his leave of the Rebels to find himself. Again, this is a lot like Luke running off to Dagobah or Han trying to break free to pay off Jabba. We've seen this before but the destination of Luke looking into Obi-Wan's shack is an intriguing development.
Han, Leia, Chewie and the droids make an appearance and while the dialogue between the droids and Han and Chewie bring smiles to the face, there are tiny problems with it. Han refers to the Falcon as "it" and I think any hardcore fan knows he refers to his ship either as "The Falcon" or as "she" and never "it." The debate between Leia and the others about pressing their advantage against the Empire seems to be a plausible one and it is nice to see it get some panel time.
The artwork has epic scenes to be sure. Han working on the Falcon, Luke training with his lightsaber, Leia in the war room are all great. Granted, these are all things you can see in the films but the artwork is very well depicted. The artwork struggles when it comes to drawing Threepio (he is rectangular) and has a lot of problems with Jabba's main audience chamber, specifically with the relative heights of the characters. It's not pretty. Overall the book tries to capture an epic look and it does that fairly well.
Star Wars is a great comic for those that love the films and want to see more of the original trilogy. Those looking for the comic to break new ground will be disappointed. The comic tells an entertaining enough story but the issue is light on plot, except to move some pieces into place for future issues. This is an average-to-good comic.
3.5 out of 5 Geek Goggles
