THE STAR WARS #6 (review)

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 March 12, 2013

Somewhere out there is a person who not only has never seen any of the Star Wars films, but also possess no working knowledge of the plot, characters, and culture surrounding it.

I want to meet this person and sit them down with The Star Wars issues 1-6 and see what they take away from it.

I’m not taking much away from it at this point, and part of that is because I’m “reading it wrong”, by which I mean I’m holding it up to the films for constant comparison.

The cross-referencing is impossible to avoid.

I can’t even walk through my apartment without some visual cue making me think of Star Wars, whether it be the vintage Kenner AT-AT that serves as a sentry on top of our linen cabinet or the portrait of Chewbacca with the bedroom eyes that a friend painted and gave me as a gift hanging in our bedroom (let it be known that for this, among other things, my wife is a saint).

How then am I supposed to read this comic, a messy, inferior “could have been” and not have the experienced be bogged down by my intimate familiarity with the superior “is”?

I raise this question a lot because I face it each month when a new issue hits the stands.

Any understanding as to what’s actually happening made possible by the fact that I know Star Wars inside and out. The language of the series informs what is otherwise an overly cramped and not all that interesting story of wizards and knights in space. Motivations from the bad guys seem to be little more than “we’re teh bad guyz, der”, which can also be said for Star Wars.

But where Star Wars kept that simple, The Star Wars attempts to over complicate their motives in the same ways the prequel trilogy did.

In other words it’s attempt to be grounded in a kind of believable evil makes it dull when it should be fun. It doesn’t help that the bad guys exist mostly as an off-page threat, only getting face time with readers when the exposition demands it. Vader and Valorum are once again given nothing to do. They aren’t even in this month’s issue.

Basically I only know what’s going on because I know that something HAS to be going on. Plus I watched that something like ten times a week growing up.

On the upside there are a couple of cool action set-pieces that you’ll recognize from what they became, cameos from the The Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters, and Wookiees.

Yay?

Not so much with the wookiees. Things are vague enough without the incoherent, phonetic grunts of Wookiees. There’s also a couple of panels in the fight between Starkiller and a Wookiee warrior that don’t seem to make any sense.

Maybe the newly introduced Owen Lars, standing in here as what I can only assume/desperately hope is the primordial surrogate for Wilford Brimley’s Noa from The Battle For Endor, will be able to serve as a translator once the Wookiees start roaring out vital plot points.

Or maybe he’ll just yell at people for not doing their chores and end up being burnt to death. The suspense!

In the meantime at least our heroes aren’t on Not-Tatooine anymore. Here’s hoping the Big Bads get some love next month. There’s only two issues left to resolve all of this I don’t know what.