Shadowhawk's Shade Guest Reviews: @DarkHorseComics Star Wars @abhinavjain87

Here is today's Guest Review by Shadowhawk from Shadowhawk's Shade, The Founding Fields, and Just Beyond Infinity, for Dark Horse Comics'; Star Wars #6. I have also added my rating after each review. If you have any questions about my rating or want to discuss anything just leave me a comment.

See the Review Rating Overview page for more information on how I rate each comic.

Star Wars #6

When he and Chewbacca are cornered by Imperials, Han Solo resorts to an improvised plan—with the most dangerous results imaginable! Meanwhile, half a galaxy away, Princess Leia and Wedge Antilles prepare for certain death, unaware that Luke Skywalker has an improvisation of his own. And Darth Vader is watching . . .

Preview

The Rebellion's Last Stand!

The first five issues of this series have been fairly intense so far. In the aftermath of the Battle of Yavin, the fledgling Rebel Alliance has been fighting against odds to survive and things have never been harder for them. There’s a spy loose in their highest ranks and they are still space-bound with no fixed base of operations, always moving from place to place in a feeble attempt at staying one step ahead of the Imperial forces.  They need allies, supplies, and a permanent location to operate out of, so that they can have some kind of stability, instead of living moment to moment. This is at the core of what Brian Wood’s Star Wars is about and the ride until now has been very thrilling and satisfying in a number of ways.

Most of #6 is taken up with the kind of fights that, in the larger Expanded Universe, the Rebel Alliance and later the New Republic have thrived upon. Long odds stacked against them, but winning through ingenuity and a good dose of luck. The action here is remarkable for the fact that Leia is at the heart of it. I've mentioned before that the series has been doing great to add some much needed agency to her character beyond appearing to be the pretty princess with an occasional badassery that often gets overshadowed later on. That’s how she was portrayed in the original movie and Brian Wood has done a lot to have her step beyond the confines of that characterization. Now she gets into the thick of the action just like the others and she is actively involved in the missions, whether covert or not.

We don’t get to see Leia much outside her flight suit and her X-wing, so a lot of the art shows her in the cockpit of the snubfighter. This adds an interesting challenge for penciller Carlos D’Anda, and I think he more than rises up to the occasion, giving her different expressions in each panel so that she stands out and doesn't come across as wooden or static.

The cameos, relatively speaking, by Luke, Wedge and Mon Mothma were very welcome. The scenes with these three ram home the sore point that there is a traitor in the Rebel Fleet and that urgent steps needed to be taken to flush this traitor out, whoever he or she may be. These particular scenes are long and full of a lot of exposition, and they repeat a few things we already know, but are for the benefit of Luke and Wedge who aren't aware of all the intricacies, so it wasn't all that bad, all things considered.

Read the rest of Shadowhawk's review on Here

My Rating

Cover & Solicit - 3/5
Art, Colors & Inking - 4/5
Layout & Flow - 4/5
Story - 4/5
Verdict - 3.9 - (Buy Star Wars #6) SAVE 10%

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Shadowhawk is a blogger at http://sonsofcorax.wordpress.com/, senior reviewer for The Founding Fields book blog, a contributor to the Just Beyond Infinity mixed-content blog and a comic book reviewer at Comic Vine. The use of these reviews has been authorized by the original author.