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Star Wars #1

By Jeremy Whitley
March 8, 2013 - 12:26

I've been aware that a Star Wars comic by Brian Wood has been in the offing for some time.  I'll say the solicit caught my eye.  However, despite my tendency to declare the merits of pre-orders and pull-lists from the rooftops, I just never got around to doing anything about getting someone to pull this series for me.

Which is unfortunate, because issue one sold out EVERYWHERE.

Now, things sell out for a variety of reasons in comics.  Sometimes it's a bizarre media frenzy.  Sometimes it's a character death.  Sometimes it's collectible variant covers or misprints.  So why did this book sell out so quickly?

Because, in a few short years, Dark Horse will be losing their contract with the Star Wars franchise.  As you're no doubt aware, Disney recently bought the franchise and a relatively large comic book company, so they're trying to get all of their horses back into their barn.  Dark Horse could have let the series lapse and sputter and slowly, quietly die.

However, it appears they have decided to go out filling the house with fireworks and setting fire to it.  I mean that in a good way.

In two years, we've seen a lot of comic book reboots, but this is how you do it.  Dark Horse hired one of the best and most prolific writers on the market, teamed them with an amazing art team, hit the book with a $2.99 price point, and launched it with an appropriate and easy to understand fanfare.  This is not the action of a company that is sulking over losing a franchise, this is a company that plans to set the bar for the sort of stories that that other company has to come out with.

So how did Brian Wood do it?  Well, he has a better understanding of what we love about Star Wars than George Lucas.  He brought back Luke, Leia, Chewie, Han, Vader, Palpatine, C3P0 - even Wedge Antilles and Mon Mothma make appearances.  This could be a great move or a terrible move.  But then, he does something I never expected - he makes Leia the hero of the story.  And that's where this book goes from solid to outstanding.

While I have fond memories of the original film trilogy, it bothered me that Leia constantly played second fiddle, even after - spoiler alert from the 70's - you discovered that she had as much potential to become a Jedi as Luke.  Brian Wood understands that in a world about which so much has been said, there is still one character who has not received her due.  And he turns that understanding into what looks to be a brilliant story that takes place between the closing credits of A New Hope and the opening credits of The Empire Strikes Back.  I want to read this story!

It should be said that Carlos D'Anda is drawing this book like a man possessed.  He nails everything from Leia's facial expressions (which look like Carrie Fisher's facial expressions) to space battle sequences to Darth Vader.  This is a man who clearly enjoys drawing Darth Vader.  Every panel with Vader in it is full of reflections and snazzy space armor and menace.  A lot of people have put pen to paper on Vader, but few if any have done it better.  And I have to say, the last panel of this book is a three-quarters shot of Leia.  It is my honest hope that this year at cons I will see three quarters of the Slave Leia's that usually roam the floors of conventions give this outfit a shot.  It makes Leia look like an honest to God action hero.

The book's not perfect, but that's okay.  Wood relies a bit heavily on captions, which is not an entirely new trend for him.  Things that could easily be relayed in natural dialogue are occasionally shoe horned into a caption.  Han and Chewie get very limited face time and, if I'm honest, Chewie's dialogue loses some of its charm without the actual sound of it.  The inflection is really key, especially in the type of one on one conversations he has with Han here.  That's more of a limit of the comic medium than anything, but it does make me miss the real thing.  My only other complaint is that the dialog between Luke and Leia feels a little more familial that it probably should at this point in the world, but that could just be an unfortunate side effect of knowing things before I should in the story.

Overall, this book is Star Wars and not just in name.  It feels more like the original trilogy than the more recent movies or the previous comics.  It is something that appeals to me both as a Star Wars fan and as a fan of comic books.

This is the comic you're looking for.  Move along.

Rating: 9.5 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12