Three months and 100 issues ago, I started my “Star Wars” Marvel comics re-read by noting how horrible the Roy Thomas/Howard Chaykin issues were. Once Archie Goodwin took over with No. 11, the standard of quality improved for the next 80-some issues, but when the series ran down in 1985-86, those early troubles were unfortunately revived.
The Mary Jo Duffy/Cynthia Martin run that closes out the title doesn’t come close to living up to its ambitions of a massive, thematically complex intergalactic war. I don’t know if Duffy or Martin — or either of them — deserves the blame. Duffy’s earlier work was much better than this, and I can see Martin’s art drop in quality with each issue. Perhaps they were rushed by deadlines. Perhaps they got conflicting editorial direction from Marvel, maybe out of panic as readership numbers dropped. Perhaps their motivation waned.
Although issue 107 is called “All Together Now,” things never quite come together. The Nagai are supposedly on the run from the Tofs, yet the Tofs are clumsy, pirate-looking brutes. The lithe and cocky Nagai actually seem scarier, what with Den’s torturing of Dani in “Escape” (97) and Knife’s eponymous skill with a blade. With a common enemy, the Nagai and the Alliance (and some Imperials, and Mandalorians such as Fenn Shysa) team up, and Luke says in the final Marvel panel:
“For the first time in a long, long time, all of us, as races and as individuals, have a fair chance at making peace. And I hope — no, I know — we can do it!”
But Duffy doesn’t earn that line.
Instead of legitimately building up to ideas about how peace could be achieved, she spends “Nagais and Dolls,” “The Party’s Over” and “My Hiromi” (104-106) jumping between our imprisoned heroes and the cowardly Hiromi, who are similar to the Duloks from “Ewoks.” Since George Lucas’ franchise was focusing on cartoons and Ewoks movies at this time, it’s possible that Duffy was following Marvel’s wishes for light, kid-friendly stories. Notably, Luke’s slaughtering of Tofs with his lightsaber is portrayed tamely, and the sex-obsession of the Zeltron boys is toned down.
Before the saga peters out, there are some OK issues, at least. Martin’s art pops in “Small Wars” (94) as Duffy writes an Ewoks-versus-Lahsbees comedy that’s in her comfort zone. But the artist was apparently rushed on future entries, where the work is sparser. “No Zeltrons” (95) is a decent lead-up to the memorable “Duel with a Dark Lady” (96). This was the first “Star Wars” comic I ever purchased at a newsstand, and I couldn’t have picked a more unusual entry, as most of the panels feature Luke and Lumiya fighting wordlessly — he with two sabers, she with her lightwhip. To this day, I’m not sure if it’s a lazy issue or a cool one.
I noted in a previous post that Lumiya is the best Marvel character, but she’s also the one with the most wasted potential. Now, it is very cool that the “Legacy of the Force” books revisited the character, but there’s still room to flesh out Lumiya’s origin story, maybe with something along the lines of this fan-made comic, brought to my attention by blog commenter Eric.
Darth Vader’s one-time dark apprentice escapes in “Escape,” but her return is anticlimactic. She pops up in one panel of the first Nagai battle in “First Strike” (100) and again in the final issue, but in the most boring way imaginable. She wants to ally herself with whoever’s most likely to kill Luke. Then she gets shot by half-Nagai, half-Corellian Bey, a childhood friend of Han’s (and unfortunately, one of the few connections to established lore that A.C. Crispin didn’t make in her “Han Solo Trilogy”). I gotta think Shira Brie creator David Michelinie would’ve done a bit more with the character had he stuck around.
“Far, Far Away” (101, but it takes place before 99) drops Han into another dimension — yes, one of those typical Marvel “Star Wars” dimensions that has horses and royalty — with a princess who helps him appreciate what he has with Leia. And “Touch of the Goddess” (99) drops our heroes on a planet where — inexplicably — the goddess statue that Lando gave to Drebble will save the populace. Both issues are forgettable.
The next two are a slightly better. “School Spirit” (102) wraps up the Kiro arc, as he ultimately opts to stay on Iskalon, pulling out that hoariest of all comic-book clichés: He decides that his loved one, Dani, is better off assuming he’s dead, and he makes Luke promise to let her go on thinking it. Kiro was obviously mistaken, as Dani is miserable for the rest of the series. “Tai” (103) then humanizes the Nagai as Leia sees one express basic emotions while imprisoned.
The oddball issue in this batch is No. 98, “Supply and Demand,” which brings back Goodwin and artist Al Williamson for one last go-around. It’s not their best work — the plot about diverted Alliance ore shipments is complex but not all that rewarding — and it feels out of place even though it technically fits here on the timeline. Still, this is “Star Wars” in a way that the Duffy/Martin issues increasingly are not — it’s mostly a big adventure, with politics and character arcs subtly peppered in. Bothered by a snot-nosed kid under his protection, Han eventually hugs the brat (who looks like Anakin Skywalker) on the final panel, providing just the slightest hint that he could be a father someday.
This final batch of Marvel issues talks a good game; indeed, “All Together Now” is quite talky, as Duffy frantically delves into the dangling arcs (many of them unearned, such as a Dani-Den romance). But fans would have to wait another five years (it seemed so long at the time, although now it seems surprisingly short) for “Heir to the Empire” and the return of serious, adult analysis of themes Duffy first hinted at.
While these final issues will never be called “good,” they are at least prescient. We later got an Alliance-Empire team-up in “The Truce at Bakura” and an alien invasion in the “New Jedi Order” series. Also, the novels and comics of the 1990s fleshed out the Han-Leia romance, Luke’s reforming of the Jedi Order and the never-ending quest for peace and a fair system of galactic governance — all concepts first introduced by Marvel.
Comments
So it ends, first of all, congratulations for your work reviewing the entire series. This final storyline had a lot of wasted potential, there are great stuff going on, Luke and Lumiya epic fight, developments for Dani and Han, Tai tragic story, but the art is bad and the characterisations are poorly. And I don’t know if the series would get improvements if it had continued, but at least we had no loose ends.# Posted By Eric | 9/1/13 7:46 PM
I agree that the final issue wrapped things up as well as it could. I imagine that Duffy probably got the call about the cancellation after No. 106 was already scripted. So she had to cram everything into the final book. Looking at the entire EU, though, there are loose ends. Since there are no mentions of Nagai in other stories, I gotta assume that something happened after No. 107 that made them decide to return to their own galaxy. It’s also odd that Dani is basically part of the gang here, pretty close friends with Leia, Luke and Han, yet she’s never mentioned again. I think it’d be cool if Dark Horse did an “Issue No. 108” to tie up some of those elements and make them jibe with the stories that were written later. As bad as these stories are, they’re not “Holiday Special” bad. They’re not so bad that they should be tossed out altogether. But although some elements of Marvel have made it into the wider EU (notably Lumiya), it seems that Dark Horse and Del Rey pretend the Nagai-Tof war never happened.# Posted By John Hansen | 9/1/13 9:54 PM