Things take a darker turn when the SCAR Squad arrives.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Jorge Molina
Colors: Matt Milla
Letters: VC’s Joe Caramagna
What They Say:
Sergeant Kreel and SCAR Squad are on board the Harbinger…and they specialize in taking down rebels — hard! Can Luke and company make it off the Star Destroyer alive?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Considering where we were just a year ago with Star Wars books, it feels like we’re in the rut right now without any clear vision to all of it. A lack of miniseries overall, the conclusion to Darth Vader, and the ongoing series feeling like it’s not sure what direction it wants to take even as it has the whole galaxy open to it. Aaron and Molina are still doing some decent stuff here, though I was frustrated by the more comedy oriented piece the last time around as a decent chunk of it just felt out of character and the flow and ideas behind it didn’t click considering what they were involved in. Perhaps it would work better in live-action form with more personality shining through.
With the barely skeleton crew dealing with trying to get the ship functional so they can break the blockade, everything has taken a more dire turn when they realize that they’re not the only ones aboard. This takes a bit of time since it’s such a small crew that’s spread out trying to do repairs and then suddenly not reporting in. There’s almost an Alien sense about it in a way as we get Luke, Sana, and some blaster fodder making their way through the ship and discover that things have gone bad for some of the teams with the blaster marks that they find. It’s fun watching Luke and Sana together as their dynamic has some good friction to it, but not overdone. Her needling him over his being a piss-poor Jedi is spot on, especially since he’s (rightfully) denying that he is. Sana’s managed to get along with everyone but Han at this point so she certainly fits into things in her own way.
The book does some good stuff as it gets further into it and the SCAR squad gets to come out of the shadows, making for some tense moments as they can obviously hold their own based on what we’ve seen of them before. It shouldn’t feel weird to see competent Stormtroopers (and those reading other media won’t find it weird), but it feels weird to Luke and the others. The book moves through these sequences well with Molina capturing the tension of what’s around the corner well, but I just wish he was able to capture the characters and their designs better as there’s almost a too-cartoony feeling about them at times, mostly for the leads. I do like what he does with the backgrounds and technical side of things, but it also looks like the big ship based sequence toward the end is done backwards after how it was first presented, making it a head scratching moment in trying to figure out the storytelling.
In Summary:
While the bigger picture aspects of this arc are intriguing with the blockade, hijacking a Star Destroyer, and the use of the SCAR Squad with Kreel’s connection to Luke, the narrative overall has had some really bumpy patches along the way that has kept me from feeling fully invested in it. It’s like we could have ditched practically all of the previous issue and not missed anything – and might have been better off for it. There are some very fun moments to be had here but a couple of drags on it as well. We’ve been in this arc for several issues now and it doesn’t feel as tight as previous ones, particularly Rebel Jail, and it has me looking forward to it being over more than seeing where it’s going to go. Not a feeling I like to have.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: All Ages
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: October 26th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
