After the first 12 issues established Brian Wood’s “Star Wars” as a character-driven series that aspired to tell the definitive story of what happened between Episodes IV and V, it takes a slight step backward with Issues 13-20 (2014). Had the series continued beyond this, it probably would’ve paid off some of its big ideas, but it was canceled due to the license switching from Dark Horse to Disney, and it ended up limping to the finish line.
The second year of Wood’s “Star Wars” starts with “Five Days of Sith” (Issues 13-14), told from the perspective of 21-year-old Ensign Nanda, who is assigned as Darth Vader’s shuttle pilot for an off-the-books mission to punish what he sees as failures in the ranks. She’s terrified the whole time as Vader acts like a jackass, killing Imperial officers left and right for no reason. It’s an effective portrayal of the helplessness one would feel when trapped in a corrupt dictatorship, but it feels more like an “Empire” or “Darth Vader and the …” story.
There is one notable continuity glitch in “Five Days of Sith.” Vader replays the “A New Hope” fight with Kenobi in his mind and plucks out the name “Luke” and fits it with “Skywalker,” which had popped into his head earlier in the series. This shows a disregard for Marvel Volume 1 Issue 35 and “Vader’s Quest,” in which Vader acquired the name Luke Skywalker by scouring the galaxy for information. While those yarns are convoluted, having the name simply pop into Vader’s head seems lazy in addition to being contradictory.
Up next, we return to the main storyline with “Rebel Girl” (15-18), which feels like a lost story from Marvel Volume 1, albeit better than most of those yarns. Leia agrees to marry the prince of Arrochar as part of a contract where the planet will allow the Rebels to set up a base. Wood makes mention of Arrochar wanting to join an “alliance of planets,” which is a misunderstanding of the covert nature of the Rebel Alliance. There are no “Alliance planets,” because the Empire would simply blow them up if they labeled themselves thusly.
Immediately, I thought “All it will take is ONE citizen to rat out the planet to the Empire.” This is why planets without intelligent life work best for bases. (Granted, Arbra’s Hoojibs turned out to be intelligent, but they also are less back-stabby than humans.) Indeed, it turns out that Arrochar’s government leaders went behind the prince’s back and made a deal with the Empire. File that under “duh.”
While the Rebellion doesn’t stay on Arrochar long, it does gain one valuable bit of information that will prove crucial in “Episode V”: Its ion cannons work.
“Rebel Girl” is one of those stories that’s both ill-conceived and well-written. For example, Han tells Wedge:
“I don’t think Leia needs to sell herself off like this for the sake of a military base. … Leia’s a force of nature. Most days she could take on the Empire all on her own and win, so why is this necessary?”
Sometimes when the characters echo the concerns of the reader, it salvages the tale a bit.
Wood’s “Star Wars” gets its mojo back in its final arc, “A Shattered Hope,” a.k.a. “Where Droids Go to Die” (19-20). Riffing on “Saving Private Ryan,” Leia impulsively gathers up Han, Chewie, Luke and the Falcon to rescue undercover agent Seren Song during a hard time when Mon Mothma can’t spare any Alliance ships. Even Han has to skimp on the Falcon’s repairs, apparently, as the ship is back to using fluidics, which he swore off of back in “Han Solo’s Revenge.” (“Damn fluidics!”)
Song is on Lotho Minor, the garbage planet where Darth Maul went insane on “The Clone Wars,” and she’s being pursued by IG-88. In the end, she provides the Alliance with Imperial planetary surveys, which will help in the search for a new base. This information might explain why the Rebels have a list of potential planets, including Hoth, in the novel “Honor Among Thieves.” The Goodwin/Williamson newspaper strip “Iceworld” told the tale of Luke and the droids stumbling upon Hoth, but I wonder if Wood would have rewritten the discovery-of-Hoth story had the series continued.
Putting a bow on Wood’s contributions to the saga, he also wrote the 2013 Free Comic Book Day issue “The Assassination of Darth Vader,” which is collected in Volume 1 of the trade paperbacks for Wood’s “Star Wars.” Set shortly before “A New Hope,” this is an outstanding dark character piece where Vader goes to incredible lengths – climbing on the outside of a Star Destroyer to get to the bridge! – to thwart an attempt on his life by an underling. Boba Fett helps Vader out of the jam, perhaps setting the stage for their good relations in future stories since they weren’t getting along too well in “Boba Fett: Enemy of the Empire.”
The only non-Wood story in the four TPB volumes of Wood’s “Star Wars” is the inconsequential Han-and-Chewbacca riff “The Art of the Bad Deal.” This 2012 Free Comic Book Day entry was collected in Volume 4 of the trade paperbacks for Wood’s “Star Wars. It was penned by Zack Whedon, who has done nice work on the “Serenity” comics. Like Wood’s FCBD entry, it seems to be set slightly before “A New Hope,” during Han and Chewie’s smuggling days. Basically, Chewie is irked that Han makes a bad deal, then leaves him tied up out of spite after knocking out the stowaways attempting to steal the Falcon.
While Wood’s “Star Wars” series will perhaps be forgotten, as it has immediately been supplanted by the Lucasfilm Story Group-backed Marvel Volume 2, it shouldn’t be. Granted, his attention to continuity was a mixed bag: He would make an insider reference to something like “fluidics” on one page, then re-imagine Vader’s discovery of Luke’s name on the next. Nonetheless, the best writing of Leia in the wake of “A New Hope” occurs in this series, and he also does nice work with Luke, Han, Wedge and Mon Mothma. It’s a shame we didn’t see the full extent of Wood’s vision for “Star Wars.”
Comments
I enjoyed your retrospective on what ended up being a pretty decent series.# Posted By Rice Fox | 8/13/15 8:34 AM
Cool. Thanks for reading.# Posted By John Hansen | 8/13/15 11:18 AM