This is a job for a Wookie!
Creative Staff:
Story: Gerry Duggan
Art: Phil Noto
What They Say:
Known as the skilled co-pilot of the infamous Millennium Falcon, the legendary Wookiee warrior Chewbacca will star in his very own limited comic series! After the battle of Yavin, Chewbacca is on his own when he crash lands his ship on an Imperial occupied planet. Now stranded, Chewie finds himself caught in the middle of trying to return to the rebellion and helping a young and feisty girl in need.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of the Chewbacca miniseries certainly had some good things about it, a lot of it really coming down to Phil Noto’s artwork as some of the splash pages really did a great job of just coming across beautifully. While Noto would not be my first pick for a Chewbacca series, he’s definitely captured the big guy in a good way, particularly with the facial expressions. On the flip side, the story has been pretty weak with that first installment and it just kind of gets a little worse here. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s a familiar idea and it’s one that’s being spread out across too many issues already as it should be a one and done or maybe even two issues. The result is that the all important supporting cast just becomes even more problematic.
And since the supporting cast really is just made up of Zarro and something about her just rubs me the wrong way, there’s a lot of weakness to the book. Stars Wars and kid characters just don’t seem to work well in general and it just feels even more blatant here. With her plan to try and save everyone in the mine from Jaum’s evil machinations, she’s come up with a skeleton of a plan that involves getting herself caught so she can show Chewie the best vent to use to get into the place and help everyone escape. It’s weak in that area, because once they have Zarro back in the mine they just let her go willy-nilly wherever she wants instead of the logical thing of being restrained, chained or watched closely. And while I get that she’s excited to be saving everyone, she just runs through talking about it openly to all the miners in different ways, which should raise a lot of red flags.
Chewie’s piece of the puzzle here certainly has its moments as he finds himself more and more involved in something that he didn’t intend to. It’s bad for him since he’s got Zarro trying to make him go in an air vent and that just doesn’t fly for him with all the memories of captivity it brings to the surface. It’s given a little bit of weight with a flashback, but he ends up doing what needs doing and there’s no further problems out of him. That just brings us back to Action Chewie with bowcaster that can’t be stopped. It’s a decent bit of action with a couple of nice visuals for it as he plays the badass, but there’s just an inherent weakness in it. As much as I love Chewie, he’s a hard one to get to carry a story and even more so when the supporting cast is as enjoyable as wet Wookie hair.
In Summary:
The second of five issues for the Chewbacca series gives us the breakout, teases a bit of what Jaum’s plan is (which isn’t worth caring about) and provides for an easy cliffhanger with no meaning because we know Chewie’s not dead. The general idea here isn’t bad but this series really feels like it should have been an anthology of Chewie stories as standalone issues rather than something that may run over the course of five issues. It’s decently and competently put together, but there’s nothing exciting or engaging about it in the way that all of the other Star Wars books have been. Sadly, the Chewbacca series is the weakest of the books to date.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: October 28th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
