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| Review by Tony Pacitti |
Writer: J. W. Rinzler
Artist: Mike Mayhew
Colorist: Rain Beredo
Cover Artist: Nick Runge
Published by Dark Horse Comics
On Sale April 16, 2013
With The Star Wars #7 the pieces are moved into place for a final confrontation between the forces of good and evil, but still who some of those forces are remains vague.
Evil is still Evil with a capital E, and that’s about as far as it goes into getting into the villains heads. Vader gets some page time–here portrayed as a bit of a psychopath as he tortures Leia.
This is a stark contrast to the Vader that made it to the screen, a ruthless, emotionless black slab of evil incarnate. Movie Vader is clinical in his approach to torture, whether it be Leia on the Death Star or Han Solo on Cloud City.
In this month’s issue we see him find a sick satisfaction in pointlessly electrocuting the young princess while he waits for his boss to show up for the actual interrogation.
It’s an interesting wrinkle on a character who has, up until this point, been little more than “that guy we like, but without a helmet!”
Vallorum is still M.I.A., which is only weird because of how prominently he’s featured on the cover. What role he plays in the evolution of this story to the films is up in the air. It makes sense to assume that he and this version of Vader just get rolled up together to make the more compelling character we’re familiar with but without all of the excess narrative fat.
My issue with the antagonists in this series aren’t new, but this month the good guys make a bizarre leap that can only be explained away as a rough draft foley. For the entire run there has been a suggested movement to oppose the Empire, mostly a network of smugglers and spies–familiar, yes?–and early on Aquilae managed to rally its forces against them, but it’s pretty much been Skywalker and Starkiller on the run with some friends and a few robots and some kids they froze for safe keeping.
With time running out–I guess?–they decide to enlist the Wookiees into mounting a last ditch assault on the Death Star.
You should be aware that these aren’t the tech-savvy Wookiees that Movie Chewbacca suggested they would be. What we have here is on par with having Han Solo blow up the shield generator on Endor and then training the Ewok village to fly X-Wings. There are some nice artistic touches, like the Wookiees painting their starfighters with tribal war paints, and the look of wonder on Chewbacca’s face during his first flight are effective, but the whole thing is so illogical, even by the established rules of the series, that it can’t help but feel like there’s no real sense of urgency. If you have time to train a fairly primitive race to not only accept the reality of space travel, but to effectively pilot and engage in ship-to-ship combat than you have time for a better plan.
It’s not like the princess is going to die or anything, right?
Guys…?
George Lucas has a soft spot for narratives featuring an advanced force being undermined by a people they see no actual threat in.
It starts with this scene and ends with the battles scenes featuring the Ewoks, Gungans, and Wookiees throughout the films. It’s an idea too pulpy to work as it tries to here, as as we go through the films we see how it takes that seed of an idea and develops it better.
The Ewoks’ efforts remain locked into the technological state of the society portrayed on-screen, i.e., not very. The Gungans, shown to have no small amount of contempt for the human Naboo and outsiders in general, are not necessarily advanced when compared to legions of droid soldiers, but what weapons they do possess are shown to have evolved out of past conflicts. When the Wookiees finally get their big screen showdown they’re shown to have maintained that strong connection with their heritage while embracing the technology that allows them to go toe-to-toe with the Separatists, as seen in their wooden combat catamarans.
So another issue and a little more of a peek at where your favorite–or not so favorite–scenes from Star Wars started out. As always all it’s mildly interesting if not a bit tedious. At least we can all take comfort in the fact that Lucas wasn’t yet surrounded by brown-nosing yes men in the 1970s.
I’m sure this Star Wars would have it’s respectable cult audience, but I doubt J.J. Abrams would be jumping at an ill-advised sequel to this…
