3 out of 5

As mentioned a zillion times on my other Aaron Marvel reviews, taken in isolation – or, rather, the issues that can be taken in isolation – Jason’s writing is mighty entertaining.  It hovers just on the edge of smart/dumb posturing to be entertaining without insulting our intelligence, and he has a good sense of the worlds in which he’s operating to shift the tone appropriately.  For Star Wars that means gobbledy-gook about thrusters and warp drives with last-ditch heroic efforts and cutaways to ominous Vader references.  And that statement can mostly summarize these issues, which, no, don’t complete the arc, but I’m retiring from Aaron’s non-creator owned stuff around now (for the reasons hopefully found in this and my other reviews).

So: Issue 21 features the badass stormtrooper squad led by badass Sargent Kreel, who blasts and chops and says declarative things.  It’s a worthwhile action issue that narrates Kreel’s thoughts as he and his crew hunt down some rebels.

Issue 22 has Luke, Han, Leia and the team attacking a destroyer with explosive results, and a worthwhile – if purposefully confusing – twist at issue’s end.  It’s a little less exciting, as art limitations make the space battles too static, but the story keeps moving.

And issue 23 backpedals in order to explain the what and why of these first two issues, just in time to catch us up with the collision of the two seemingly separate threads for, we’ll assume, issue 24.

As mentioned, Aaron has a good handle on what Star Wars should feel like, and the character archetypes are so fully formed by this point that writing the Han / Leia bickering and prove-my-worth Luke stuff might be second nature, but that’s not to say that Aaron is phoning it in.

However, there’s a bigger problem here, and it will extend forevermore to most of these big name properties: At this point, nothing much is going to change.  I sat back from issue 23 and recognized that it was just pages of, essentially, fan service: of jokes where we expect them, of action where needed, of references where needed.  And that fully makes sense for the title, so I’m not faulting Jason for that, but it’s a big deciding factor in whether or not its worth your dollars.  If you like the universe and don’t need it to evolve, then I think Aaron is handling it pretty well, and this arc in particular feels like it cam stand on its own.  But if you’re expecting and deeper sci-fi digging, prepare to flip through the book with ease, but not get much satisfaction from it.

The art is also very odd.  Molina does good, expressive character work, but Matt Milla’s colors seem to be in search of a more somber style.  The flatness of his colors weighs down Jorge’s cartoonishness, rendering the action inert, and when Molina doesn’t have any humans / creatures to work with, his artwork feels like its drawn from ship cut-outs (which it might very well be, in order to remain on-model for picky SW fans).  So the grounded action of issue 21 – also noting the faces are hidden behind sterile stormtrooper outfits – works well, but the outer space stuff of 22 and 23 is a snooze.

Nothing new, I’d say, but I think that’s already par for the course with a lot of big titles.  And “par” by no means means bad, just, y’know, average.