Enter the wildcard.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: Marco Castiello & Dan Parsons
What They Say:
The Rebellion’s plan is coming together. All Luke Skywalker has to do is elude an Imperial spy—and perform some unanticipated rescues! But this farm boy is on the edge of greatness, and he is not about to stop saving the galaxy now!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Admittedly, the Chewbacca story in the previous issue went better than I expected it to, but it still felt like the weakest chapter of the story because they kept it to the point where the reader and others couldn’t understand our lead character. That’s normal and fits in with most Star Wars material in general so I didn’t mind it, but it made for a lighter reader without the kind of depth and context that it needed, though we still got the narration which helped to smooth that all over a bit. With the final issue here in the miniseries, we get to see Luke step onto the stage as the big picture of what’s going on comes into play and the reality if the situation is revealed. It’s solid and fun but it also suffers from a bit too much of a look at where things were, through a different set of eyes.
With this book, it’s back to the beginning here as we get to follow Luke, who himself is being followed by an Imperial spy that’s keeping an eye on the whole situation. Going with this, we see how he had ended up following Luke because Luke just moves differently than the others of the small cabal of the Rebel Alliance and what they’re doing. While he observes the straightforward approaches to events that Han and Leia had gone through, Luke is something different that has him drawn to him to see what’s going to happen. As Han gets captured and events shift to Leia and then Chewbacca, this spy continues to observe pieces of those as Luke comes into contact with some of them, picking up Leia and Chewbacca for example, and moving their operation to the next stage. Luke’s also a draw for the spy as he sees a lightsaber used for the second and third time in his life, the first being a dangerous time in his childhood when Vader had killed many in his own village. For someone experiencing something like that so young, it’s easy to imagine that a weapon like a lightsaber being used could be quite engaging to see, to the point where you alter your own plans just to see where it’ll all go.
In a lot of ways, what we get from this issue is the clean up act and finalization of events as Luke goes about what he does all towards the goal of getting the codes to Han, who has sat in jail for a brief bit of time that all of this actually plays over. It’s interesting in the same way the previous issues were to see the narration by the spy, ally and others as we saw before talking about how they view these individuals, and the spy here certainly gets a bit more to chew on as he sees Luke interacting with Leia and the others as well, something that was absent before. But it also feels a little rushed in what it’s trying to do since it has to touch on the previous events, connect them together from Luke’s point of view, and then shift the narrative briefly to Han as he gets what he needs in order to put the bigger plan into motion. And it has to let the spy have his own moment with the group as well, which admittedly was a nice closing moment for the show as well. I was also glad to get a little time with a couple of Trandoshan’s as I have a stupid affection for those particular aliens from my childhood.
In Summary:
Matt Kindt had a good run on this miniseries as a whole and it’s that I do think that when read in full it will work quite well. For me, the first half of it was a lot more fun than the second half as we got some great capers and some great commentary and insights on the characters. With Chewbacca, we got some decent stuff but it felt like it fell short. And for Luke, it was more complicated because it felt like a partial rehash and not enough material for him to really stand out on his own. I wish it had one more issue to the run to give Luke more of his own time before going into this part of it. But as a whole, there’s a lot to like here and it’s a very fun series to help close out Dark Horse’s time with this license, one they’ve done very well with for quite a few years. It’s the kind of send off that leaves me with a smile towards it all.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 30th, 2014
MSRP: $3.50
