THE STAR WARS #4 (review)

Review by Tony Pacitti

The Star Wars #4 (of 8) 
Writer: J. W. Rinzler  
Artist: Mike Mayhew  
Colorist:  Rain Beredo  
Cover Artist: Nick Runge  
Published by Dark Horse Comics
On Sale December 4th, 2013 

So Han Solo looks like Martian Manhunter with Swamp Thing’s weird nose-bill-thing. That’s kind of a let down.

In general this issue was a bit of a bummer.

We’re now halfway through the series and I feel like it’s kind of stalled out. Skywalker and Starkiller have managed to get the royal children to the port city of Gordon, where they meet a Solo who is not the scoundrel I know him to be.

Which is fine, except that he’s so dull compared to the real Han Solo.

He’s just another righteous freedom fighter in a cast of plenty of them. Outside of his hulking, green frame there’s nothing special about him and the characters here already have a hard enough time standing out from one another.
  
I’ve mentioned feeling that reading this month to month is a problem. I feel like Whitesun probably has more of a personality than I’m giving him credit for, but at this point I just don’t care enough about him to go back to previous issues to discover if he does or not.

Vader still just stands around looking at stuff and at this point he’s starting to remind me of the Patton Oswalt bit “At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas With a Shovel” where he explains how everyone you love from the original trilogy just sort of stands around looking at stuff in the prequels.

Prince Valorum, the first actual Sith in the series tortures some guys but that’s not particularly shocking; we know he’s straight up evil because of the language of Star Wars. Sith = Evil unless you’re Darth Vader and this is the last act Return of the Jedi.

It could be that lexicon and, to a greater degree, the visual language of Star Wars that’s jamming me up here.

The characters might all be variations of what they later become, but for four issues now they’ve been on what might as well be Tatooine. The cantina scene happens in this issue–the fight in the bar is pretty much the same–and they’re still just talking about leaving.

A significant amount of stuff has happened narratively speaking. These characters are not in the same place they are when Luke and Ben get to the cantina, but the original trilogy of films established such a strong act structure based on the setting that it’s hard to step away from it:
   
A New Hope: 

1. Tatooine
2. Death Star
3. Yavin/Space battle

The Empire Strikes Back: 

1. Hoth
2. Dagobah/Asteroids
3. Cloud City

Return of the Jedi:

1. Tatooine
2. Endor
3. Final battle (predominantly Death Star and Space)

That rhythm sort of falls apart at the end of Return of the Jedi, bouncing us between three lines of narrative, but it’s so strongly established by the first two that it feels like an essential ingredient.

They’ll probably get to the Opuchi System soon enough, but in the meantime I feel like we’ve been stuck on Not-Tatooine for far too long.

A consideration: the original script was written with a majority of its exteriors set in one consistent setting for practical reasons. Keeping the location shoots to a minimum may have been a conscious decision to help get the movie greenlit. Everything else could be done on a soundstage.

The difficulties in getting the original Star Wars off the ground are legendary. Maybe my issue with this issue is nothing more than an ambitious young filmmaker’s attempt to make his script an easier sell.

I can’t imagine Lucas thought it would be illustrated monthly 40 years down the road.