So close yet so far!
Creative Staff:
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Salvador Larroca
Colors: Edgar Delgado
Letters: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
The Hero of the Rebellion & the Princess of the Revolution! Luke and Leia finally get some time alone. Unfortunately, it’s stranded on a desert island.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Nostalgia’s a funny thing in a lot of ways just in how it makes you crave certain things to come back, particularly in the Star Wars universe. After the Screaming Citadel arc, the main series is doing some smaller stories at the moment with one that focuses on Luke and Leia. What got me was how quickly it reminded me of the late 1980’s stories from the original Marvel run involving the water breathers of Iskalon and having a kind of weird hope that the creations from Mary Jo Duffy and Ron Frenz back then would surface in Aaron and Larroca’s incarnation of the series. There’s a certain flash of it but I’ll admit I wanted something that really embraced and explored it as I’d love it to become proper canon again.
Anyway, this tale told small is very welcome even if it has to skirt the edges of awkwardness from how the films reconfigured things post-Empire Strikes Back. Here, we get Luke and Leia escaping from the Screaming Citadel material and now find themselves elsewhere in a ship that’s about to fall apart while trying to avoid TIE fighters. They manage to land the ship that’s amid a nebula that keeps communications outside low and survive on this relatively small island overall, the only land mass in the immediate area that they can see. It’s standard kind of stuff in that they have to survive as the ship can’t be fixed, there are no easy parts to grab from, and there’s no society or city here that they can interact with to get some sort of help.
The awkwardness is in that if this does play out over the couple of weeks as indicated one can imagine things getting maybe a bit closer between the two that don’t yet know their true relationship, which is both amusing and cringey. The tale is told through Leia’s narration and we get some good nods to her upbringing and rebellious streak that also plays well to Luke’s past in how he can use some of that here to help them survive. Both come across well and feel like they’re far better humanized in just this one issue than in most of what we’ve gotten over the last two plus years in the run. Naturally, there are discoveries made here with an underwater society that doesn’t get anywhere near enough time that it needs to connect with and we get a brief bit with the Empire – though I’m now fan of AT-AT’s coming up from underwater like this. It’s fun overall but it’s everything prior to that which sells me on it, especially as Larroca really captures the island life well but also just the kind of casualness of the characters.
In Summary:
With some fun things in the Screaming Citadel arc but not a strong enough work overall, this one-off story is one that definitely delights as it puts Luke and Leia together in a very good way. It touches on their past without it being a full blow kind of flashback piece and it helps to bond them together a bit with some time away from everything else, even though the greater worry is still there. And it looks like the next issue is going to give us some Lando and Sana fun that has me really hopeful for something great. Aaron does a solid job here with this kind of tale and Larroca brings it to life wonderfully, especially with Delgado’s color work with all the lush island colors and that of the sea.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: All Ages
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 5th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
