Delusions of grandeur, indeed.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: Marco Castiello & Dan Parsons
What They Say:
A young Rebel meets one of the Alliance’s best for his first mission. But the young man’s hero worship is crushed by the reality of Han Solo. A botched escape, a ship that doesn’t work—could it be that Solo is just a lucky bumbler whose luck has run out?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I’ve dabbled in some of the Star Wars comics universe that Dark Horse has brought out over the years, I’ve mostly not gotten too deeply involved for a variety of reasons. Admittedly, my first love is with the old Marvel Comics series because that’s what introduced me to comic books itself, complete with a green humanoid bunny rabbit that tickled my eight year old self. But when it comes to what Dark Horse has done in expanding the universe and its stories, I’m completely in awe of it because the scale is so impressive and it goes in so many directions that I really had no idea where to start. So I never really did. But sometimes a book comes down that piques your interest and you can’t help but to take a gander. Such is the case with Rebel Heist.
Written by Matt Kindt with artwork by Marco Castiello and Dan Parsons, the opening issue takes us to the time after A New Hope and fills in some of the blanks there a bit. With the Death Star destroyed and the rebel cred picking up a bit, the fight is about to get a lot bigger and a lot more intense since the Empire is going to throw its full weight at the rebel problem. For the rebels, that means there’s a mad dash to beef up their support as well as adding more to their ranks and there’s always a danger to that since you never know what you’re going to get. For every solid player you get on your side, there’s a chance that they’re a spy or something else that will end up working against. With this series, we get a look at what happens with a new recruit named Jan who has completed his basic training and is now set into the galaxy to go on his first training mission itself with an experienced hand at it.
Unfortunately for Jan, he ends up going to Corellia where his cover gets blown right from the bat and he’s saved by his contact, Han Solo. Told from Jan’s perspective with a lot of inner monologue playing out in the story that works well, we get to see how Jan goes from being in complete and utter awe of Solo and the legend in the making that he is to finding him to be utterly crazy, suicidal and scary enough to deal with that he’ll jump ship and leave the rebel alliance completely. It’s an interesting arc that gets covered in a single issue since it shows how one person can change your view of something. With Solo through Jan’s view, he transposes the entirety of how the rebel alliance works with this one man and if you believe that they operate the same, it makes a lot of sense that you’d avoid it as much as you can.
Solo’s rescue of Jan is done with a kind of casual ease of experience that’s fun to watch as they make their escape, but the problems come in when you have Solo making so many choices that keeps putting them in danger. Not just putting them in danger, but waiting for danger and even capture along the way. With Jan only getting half the story, as it’s clear that Solo is either training him in some particular way or is looking for an into an Imperial facility for some undisclosed motives, it’s easy to understand his frustration as time progresses and they get saved by the seat of their pants only to be thrown right back into the sarlacc pit. You have to feel for Jan as each new twist puts him in more danger and as he can’t understand why it’s happening, but you also have to enjoy the view of Solo going through all of these motions and seeing his plans work and then altered by events so that he has to recalibrate. And you get a good sense that this is how he lives his life in general and absolutely loves it.
While I have not read any of Matt Kindt’s work before, I know, for shame, writing Star Wars books is difficult because you have to capture your own tone but also that of the franchise as a whole. Even more so when writing one of the most iconic of its characters. Here, he finds the right approach by doing it through the eyes of another and going from utter awe to dismay in regards to him – which is how you can view him in the movies as well. The team of Marc Castiello and Dan Parsons do a great job overall of bringing this world to life, touching in various pieces of gear along the way that are familiar while also exploring other areas such as Corellia to give it a new life. There’s a good familiarity to it all but also a sense of taking on its own path. My only complaint, and it’s one that I generally have with most adapted works, is that the design for Solo just feels off in some of its details with the face and that always takes me out of it.
In Summary:
I’m a bit of a hard sell on the Star Wars franchise in general when it comes to moving away from the movies because of the sheer size of it all at this point and the overall connected nature of so much of what has come before. With this series, we’re getting a bit of a smaller story that for its opening issue focuses on Han Solo through a different character’s perspective as a mission goes all wonky in a big way. The inner monologue works well and it helps to paint a good picture that’s aided by the visual design of it all. Matt Kindt definitely hits the right tone for the serie with this opening installment and has me actively looking forward to seeing what the next installment will be like to see if it can be carried forward from there to tell a larger tale of a time just after A New Hope.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: April 30th, 2014
MSRP: $3.50
