Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Star Wars: Chewbacca #2
Marvel Comics
Duggan & Noto
The Chewbacca mini-series continues to be an extremely frustrating read. This issue contains some nice action and good artwork but leaves too many plot questions and strange flow problems that completely detract from the read. The comic tries to show Chewbacca through a child's eyes, but fails to capture that wonder or charm. The darkness of the story line simply overpowers whatever light-heartedness this comic is trying to convey. I found this to be a below average read.
Chewbacca has been convinced, by an adolescent girl, named Zarro, to help rescue her father, Arrax, from the slave mines. This marks the first plot hole. It isn't exactly clear if Arrax and friends are slaves or not. They seem to act like regular workers. No guards, no chains, food rations, freedom among the tunnels are just some of the items that make this seem like they aren't slaves. Though, they talk about escaping or being rescued in one moment and then bring up working off their debt in another. This leads to the second problem.
Zarro's plan is to head back into the mine for a rescue. Not in stealth mind you, but to allow herself to be recaptured. She had escaped the previous issue but her plan is to return so that Chewie can read her homing beacon within the mine. Chewie will then be able to pinpoint where in the mine the people are located. Zarro returns to the mine as if nothing has happened. Her captors don't search her or punish her and her captors make no effort to monitor her and she immediately takes off on her own to an unoccupied spot in the mine to alert Chewie. The alert Zarro uses is another problem.
Zarro reasons that she must go into the mine to guide Chewie to an unoccupied area to avoid a fight. However, she informs Chewie that some of the vents may collapse because of the larva so he should just pick another one. Wouldn't that be problematic if the people are in one area and Chewie goes to another area because the vent is clear? Also, the monitor that Chewie is using seems to show if a vent is clear or not. Wouldn't it make more sense for both of them to sneak down a vent? Especially since Chewie does that anyway to surprise some guards. It's very difficult to take any of this very seriously. It feels so lazy in its execution.
There are plenty of more oddities, like aliens working for the Empire and the random killings of workers, but they aren't plot holes. They simply don't make much sense.
The high point of the story is the flashbacks that Chewie has to his capture and enslavement. These were some powerful scenes. The ending of the comic also offers a promise that this is going somewhere.
Noto on art is a gem. The pencils look great and Chewie is not a character that every artist seems to nail. The expressions, the body language and the eyes are all powerful tools in the art presentation that help Chewie to get his point across.
"Chewbacca" is a comic that features great artwork but a badly executed story. The story has confusing choices that the characters make that are compounded by a poorly conceived rescue operation plot. The book seems to struggle with presenting a story through a child's eyes as it deals with some fairly adult material (is it typical to have a character call someone a bastard in Star Wars?). This series needs a tighter script and editorial hand because the art can only save so much issue to issue. I do not recommend this comic.
2 out of 5 Geek Goggles
