The battle becomes even more desperate.
Creative Staff:
Story: Kieron Gillen
Art: Salvador Larroca
Colors: Guru e-FX
Letters: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
HAN SOLO…admiral? PRINCESS LEIA leads a squad to try and recover the secret that can save the rebel fleet…Unfortunately, it’s aboard the EXECUTOR.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Hope Dies arc has been pretty decent overall so far though I continue to get the sense that it’ll be a solid trade read since it’s a little decompressed with the focus on the battle. Kieron Gillen is having a good time in shifting up where everyone is and how they interact with others so that it doesn’t feel like we’re getting another group event. And while Salvador Larroca’s character artwork doesn’t work for everyone it continues to work for me in being a midway point toward capturing the actual likenesses. With this issue, it’s heavy on the dogfight aspect of this storyline and that’s something that’s hard to capture but plays out very well here.
For Leia and the command infrastructure, we continue to see them basically in wait mode until the technical side can break through the coding that has put them into these dire straights. Leia’s definitely feeling some intense thoughts toward Trios at this point and she gets to make them actionable here as the command codes they need are actually on the Imperial super star destroyer. Now, this is where we get that kind of absurd moment in that they come up with a way to sneak onto the ship under the guise of Trios in order to steal the codes but you kind of look past that in the chaos of the battle. It’s good classic serial adventure kind of stuff and it sets the stage for a much more interesting installment coming next since Vader is right behind them.
What makes up the bulk of the book as this plays out is following the battle itself. With Vader out there sniping at the Rebels and taking some hard shots at the Falcon, there’s still the attempts at trying to launch the rest of the fighters. It’s a fun sequence as you get Luke trying to figure out a way to signal Ackbar how to do it since he’s watching the fleet that they built crumble around them with so many ships falling to the incoming attacks from the capital ships. It’s engaging to watch as Han ends up figuring out how to get back into the action after the Falcon gets taken down for the moment and combining that with some of the dialogue, particularly the whole Admiral Solo bit, just hits a certain sweet spot. The Falcon crashing bit didn’t work for me but the rest of it was a lot of fun.
In Summary:
The main Star Wars book has another solid installment as we get to the middle point of the arc and everything shifts with it. It’s here that we get a good battle sequence further underway as Larroca captures it very well with the movement and style while giving it the kind of backgrounds that adds to the scale at times. The subplot with Leia is one that is kind of ridiculous in a way but it’s also something that I’m looking forward to more of because it’ll be fun to watch with her having to go up against Vader and whatever else they find on the Imperial ship.
Grade: B
Age Rating: All Ages
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 5th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
