What a Wookie!
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: Marco Castiello & Dan Parsons
What They Say:
Han Solo is in an Imperial jail, and a crime boss has the information that will free him. Enter Chewbacca, who pounds and pummels his way through the mission, accompanied by an untrusting ex-Imperial who can’t understand a word Chewie says. Not that words matter much to a Wookiee on a rampage!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Star Wars: Rebel Heist worked quite well for me in its first issue with the focus on Han Solo and then very, very well in its second issue with Princess Leia. Giving us more material from the time before Empire Strikes Back and showing us how the Rebellion was operating is definitely interesting material, particularly since the stories aren’t told through the primary characters we know but rather the new characters introduced and assigned to work with them. This gives us a new view of the leads that breaks out from our own view of them and that can go a long way towards looking at them in a new light. Leia in particular really shone in the last issue, but it left me wary of this issue. As much as I love Chewbacca in the films, interpretations in comics and novels have been less than satisfying for the most part. The team here does their best with it though, again managing to excel because of the execution.
The story focus works through having the story told by the trooper that Leia and Sarin rescued in the previous issue as he ends up on a backwater world with Sarin, who finished the mission after Leia’s capture. Though Sarin gets a short nod here, what she does is deliver the unnamed Trooper to where they need to be. With his body encoded at the DNA level with key information about the Empire, a creative way of ensuring keys are used in the ways they prefer, the Trooper is in a truly precarious position compared to others that we’ve seen. His turning traitor isn’t explored in depth, but we get some decent nods towards his lack of loyalty towards the Empire, though that doesn’t mean an adherence to Rebel ideals. But loyalty is his key factor here and the exploration of it comes through the person he’s paired with for this adventure in the form of Chewbacca.
Chewbacca is hard to write for because outside of the grunts and growls, which thankfully aren’t translated here, he has to talk by showing. And we see that as he rescues the Trooper and proceeds to move him towards the capital building where the Galaxy Drive is stored that he needs access to in order to give the Rebels the keys that they need. The book moves with the kind of force of will that comes from what you think of a Wookie and the Trooper, who has had bad experiences with Wookies before having been stationed on Kashyyk, makes some interesting observations as the two move towards their goal. From his initial view of them being little more than animals, largely dealing with them from a distance, he starts to realize more of what drives Chewbacca, and that comes back to the loyalty to friends. We know it, having seen the films of course, but it’s conveyed in a good way here through the external source and through the fun that happens as Chewbacca deals with both basic lizard creatures that attack and some time spent with the Gammoran types we saw at Jabba’s palace before.
In Summary:
Not surprisingly, this issue is the weakest of the miniseries so far, but nowhere near as bad as I thought it could be. Chewbacca is a well known character and popular enough in his own right, but he’s a very hard one to spin off on his own since you either play it true with no general understanding of what he says or you translate it and lose something of his personality. Kindt made the right choice here and through the Trooper’s narration, we get a good look at him in a new light, though just a few shades of new rather than a whole rewriting. Castiello and Parsons do a solid job here, but a lot of the time it doesn’t feel like Chewbacca has the right presence or size to him that the Trooper talks about. There are good scenes, but as a whole it just doesn’t connect quite as well as the past installments in this area. It does move the story forward overall though and as we get closer to the end, there’s some fun nods here towards the later films while also nudging this arc along nicely.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: June 25th, 2013
MSRP: $3.50