Star Wars #17

By Brian Wood, Stephane Créty, Julien Hugonnard-Bert & Gabe Eltaeb

The Star Wars ongoing has been hit and miss lately, but with this issue, Brian Wood ups the stakes as things really start to kick into gear. We know Leia’s wedding doesn’t come to pass due to the fact that this is set in-between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, so it was only a matter of time before things kicked off and it was great when they did.

First off, Stephane Créty’s artwork looks amazing. It didn’t really work in the earlier issues due to the fact that it didn’t feel Star Wars-y enough, but that was mainly the problem with the plot not feeling Star Wars-y enough. Now that we’re back in familiar territory, his artwork really shines and his pencils are among the highlight of the comic, with Hugonnard-Bert’s inks and Gabe Eltaeb’s colours really working well to add to the feel of the book – the one complaint being that the villains perhaps look a bit too cartoonish. This is the issue where everything that the Alliance have hoped for is getting ripped to shreds before their eyes, and it’s what the book has been building up to this point over the last few issues since this arc began.

From the start, the scene with Luke is handled well. Wood executes it superbly creating a great sense of atmospheric tension – from the moment Ben starts talking to Luke we know that something bad is going to happen, and soon – and it doesn’t leave you disappointed, allowing for a great action scene that follows, leaving the reader the same awesome feeling that they had during the original trilogy whenever a lightsaber was activated – you knew something awesome was going to happen.

Despite all the positive things that this issue has been full of, there are some negatives. The storyline focused on the Royal Wedding is the weakest part of the book, with the action regarding Luke and his time with the Rangers the highlights.

It’s sure good to have this book feeling like a Star Wars comic again, and now that we’re back on form, it should have the reader looking forward to next month’s issue for the first time in a while, especially with the cliffhanger that sees things go from bad to worse for the Rebels. Yes, we know they’re going to get out of here eventually and all in one piece for the events of Empire Strikes Back – but the fun will be seeing how they do it, because the odds at this point are pretty stacked against the characters.