Luke Owen reviews Star Wars #2…
THE GREATEST SPACE ADVENTURE OF ALL TIME CONTINUES! The Rebel assault on Cymoon 1 continues! Luke Skywalker – cornered by Darth Vader! Han, Leia, and the others – trapped!
Last month’s debut edition of Star Wars at Marvel was quite a decent little affair. It wasn’t spectacular in any way shape or form, but it did enough to make you want to come back and read some more. There are issues with the artwork, but the story from Jason Aaron is pretty slick and the opening crawl really sets the Star Wars tone, making it easy to settle into the action.
When we last left our heroes, Darth Vader had shown up and ruined what should have been a simple mission for the rebels. Now Luke Skywalker is set for his first showdown with Vader, Han and Leia are using an AT-AT walker to escape and C-3PO is stuck on the Millennium Falcon with some scavengers taking it apart piece by piece.
In short, this is an issue that is balls to the wall action. No messing about.
What’s interesting from a fan perspective is that this is, at least in this canon, the first encounter between Luke Skywalker and his father Darth Vader. In this cannon, Vader is unaware of who Luke is and addresses him like a child who found a lightsaber rather than an Obi-Wan Kenobi prodigy who was given the lightsaber he lost in their climactic battle at the end of Revenge of the Sith. In fact, this is referenced in the comic and is perhaps Vader’s first inkling that Luke is his son when he takes the lightsaber off him and recognises the hilt.
The problem with this scene is that Jason Aaron’s script is a little clunky. Some of the dialogue doesn’t flow to well and neither character sounds like the established ones we know. Luke is still bratty and somehow sounds less adjusted to being a hero here than he did at the end of A New Hope. There is no resemblance to the man who took down the Death Star on his own and it feels like he can barely spell the word ‘Force’ let alone use it. What should have been an epic moment in the comic, ends up being a bit flat and rubbish.
But this sequence isn’t the only one to feature clunky dialogue. Leia shouting, “he’s using the Force” was a particular highlight, as was Luke looking at speeders while remembering, “I’m a farm boy who used to bullseye womp rats”. Yep, the fan pleasing that held back the first issues is fairly prevalent here too and looks to be a mainstay theme.
With that said, Jason Aaron does construct a few great sequences and he really has a knack for writing the dialogue for both Vader and C-3PO. Vader is a bad ass force to be reckoned with in this issue and it’s interesting to see the early stages of the Empire Strikes Back Vader compared to the one seen in A New Hope. Likewise with C-3PO who has the comic relief moment of the issue where he tries to threaten the scavengers using a blaster. Sadly, this moment is tainted by some more fan service, but that seems to be par for the course by this point.
John Cassaday’s artwork also remains an issue (particularly in the faces of the main characters), but he can really structure an action scene well. This is a dialogue-light issue so the action needed to be frantic and exciting which Cassaday gets across rather well. It will be interesting to see what he can do later down the line when the lightsaber fights and more character driven action beats kick in.
Star Wars #2 is a decent follow-up to the fairly decent first issue, and in some ways was more fun to read. There’s a lot of flaws to pick out, but it’s once again difficult to say Star Wars #2 is a failure. Less fan service and some refined artwork would help this series by the bucket load, but we’ll see how it goes from here.
At least the Darth Vader series looks excellent.
Luke Owen is the Deputy Editor of Flickering Myth and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published February 6, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
