Star Wars #3

By Charles Soule, Jesus Saiz, Arif Prianto, and VC’s Clayton Cowles

This month gives us a new issue of Star Wars and the excitement is building up as the cast returns to Cloud City for the first time since The Empire Strikes Back! Readers were teased in the previous issue of the story behind what happened to Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber after his duel with Darth Vader. Unfortunately, Star Wars #3 does not answer that question quite yet, but we are getting closer to learning that answer. In the meantime, we are given a great story as we learn more about series villain, Commander Zahr, and how the rebels will complete their respective missions at Cloud City.

Star Wars #3, written by Charles Soule, opens with a great scene that details the motivation behind Commander Zahr. Even though it’s only the third issue, we can already tell that Commander Zahr is going to be a great villain. Soule has given us an Imperial villain that doesn’t appear as a mindless stormtrooper, but as someone with a legitimate vendetta against the rebels for killing someone she was close to on the first Death Star. The characters in general are handled perfectly in this issue. We get a lot of great interactions between Lando and the citizens of Bespin that were under his leadership. Lando is thankfully getting plenty of moments to shine and show his personality as a smooth talker who loves his people. Luke and Leia get some good moments as well, but the highlight for this issue is when Lando is on the page. 

The art handled by Jesus Saiz and Arif Prianto is a great look for the flagship Star Wars comic series. Star Wars #3 stays consistent with the previous two issues in it’s visual quality and there should be no complaints from readers. Each character is accurately portrayed true to the actors’ likenesses from the original films. Not only are the characters portrayed well, we also get to see some iconic locations in Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back. A particularly powerful page in this issue comes when Luke and Leia revisit respectively visit where Luke battled Darth Vader and where Leia is in the carbon freeze chamber. Finally, the last page of this issue will not only surprise fans by the story implications, but it will also impress the reader with a magnificent splash page to get the reader excited for the next issue.

This era in Star Wars is relatively unknown to the new Disney canon and die-hard Star Wars fans will eagerly read each issue that comes out in order to fill the gaps between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi. Even if you are not a die-hard Star Wars fan, this new Star Wars series by Charles Soule is fun for anyone to join in.