Catching up with Marvel Star Wars

Hey everybody!
In addition to re-watching the Clone Wars TV series recently, I’ve also been reading my way through some of the recent Star Wars comics from Marvel. They’ve been a bit hit-and-miss, if I’m honest, but let’s take a look!

First on the list is Princess Leia. I was really interested by this series when it was announced, though I have to admit, I wasn’t overly impressed. The story follows Leia in the immediate aftermath to the Battle of Yavin, but it’s a bit weirdly done, if I’m honest. More than anything, it feels a bit rushed, with very little time spent on much of anything. We follow Leia as she tries to unite the Alderaan expatriots, first from Naboo and then Sullust, ending on Espirion. It’s interesting, but as I said, a bit rushed. She’s teamed up with an Alderaanian pilot who has something of a frosty relationship with her, but it kinda thaws but kinda not by the end. The Naboo portion really didn’t live up to my expectations, and the Sullust part just felt out of character somewhat. Finally, the Espirion bit seemed just tacked-on in order to bring about a conclusion.

I’m a huge lover of the planet Naboo, and feel like this in particular could have been given more time. Indeed, if the story had been that Leia was going to rescue a hidden group of Alderaanians, was unwittingly betrayed and managed to defeat their pursuit, that would have been a better story. By adding in all of this extraneous stuff, nothing is given enough time to develop, and it’s just left me feeling a bit meh about the whole thing.

Lando was a bit better. We see the con artist steal a ship in order to clear a debt – only it turns out to be the Emperor’s ship, and he’s not impressed! There are some twists and turns, but obviously Lando survives to later run Cloud City and stuff. What I found most interesting here was the way Lobot is used in the story. He’s basically a guy with cyborg implants, who is constantly fighting against those implants asserting themselves over his neural pathway. Kinda spoiler alert: in order to save the others, Lobot succumbs to the implants and is turned pretty much fully into the cyborg we know from Empire. It was really cool to see that, I have to say – so many stories seem to ignore him!

While it is a bit far-fetched at times, overall I thought the story was pretty good for what it tries to do. It’s not going to set the world alight, but if you’re a Lando fan, then you’ll enjoy it.

Finally – Chewbacca. Oh boy, is this one a mess. A comic that focuses on the big Wookiee is always going to be somewhat predoomed by the fact that Chewie is unintelligible to the audience, and while stories have been told previously that use square brackets to give his lines, I was a bit concerned. As it turns out, the story mainly focuses on the denizens of a far-flung planet as they are forced to mine beetle larvae that somehow help to power blasters – a planet that Chewie has managed to crash-land upon. The daughter of one of these miners manages to enlist his help to free the miners, framing the overlord as a Rebel sympathiser in the bargain.

The story was just…dumb. Chewie’s interactions with the kid were weird, as she went from cautious and trying to scavenge food from him to pretty much demanding he help the miners escape and calling him out as a coward between panels. The artwork was pretty great, though a lot of the Chewie portraits had him looking almost ironic, like he wasn’t really taking the whole thing seriously? I don’t know. It didn’t really sit well for me as a story, and really felt just irrelevant to the canon.

The only thing I would say is worthwhile are a couple of flashback panels where we see Chewie being taken prisoner by Trandoshan slavers. Remember, Chewie’s backstory as an Imperial slave freed by the Imperial cadet Han Solo is no longer canon, so this can pretty much go any way. I’m guessing the upcoming anthology movie that shows us Han’s background will likely feature Chewie prominently, so we can likely expect to get the full story there, but it was interesting to note these little bits.

So anyway, the first three miniseries were something of a mixed bag, and not really what I would call hugely relevant. The Leia story tries in this regard, but I feel it fails to deliver, leaving us with a bit of a mess overall, while Lando and Chewie are pretty much throwaway stories with little impact, that will mainly appeal to fans of the characters rather than the franchise as a whole. Lando was probably my favourite, simply because the characters were nailed, but I’m not about to say you need to go out and buy any of these things!