Star Wars: Rebel Jail

by Jason Aaron, Kieron Gillen, Mike Mayhew, Angel Unzueta, Leinil Francis Yu
collects Star Wars Annual #1, 15-19
volume one | two | three | four

The third volume of Jason Aaron’s Marvel Star Wars series is….just very, very meh. It starts off strong at least, with Star Wars Annual #1, written not by Aaron but Kieron Gillen. Rebel spy Eneb Ray’s one shot was dark and powerful, much stronger than the Obi Wan single-issue story last volume, even though he’s part of the main films. But apparently rebel spies still have a diversity issue: of all the spies on Coruscant, all but one were white dudes. Come on, white dude creators! This is…Star Wars…oh yeah.

also, on a spoiler note: putting the Star Wars Annual with Ray makes sense in context of the main story, but it also makes the “big villain reveal” painfully obvious.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story is so so and things go downhill from there. Aaron still has the voices down but it’s tough to create an engaging story without much room for creativity between episode IV and V.

But finally, the volume does manage something few Star Wars movies have accomplished: pass the Biechdel test. Dr Aphra, rogue archaeologist and employee of Darth Vader (who has her own series) is caught and arrested by Leia and Sana who take her to a maximum security prison, where the A plot spends its time. There are still some unnecessary, gratuitous shots, but it was nice to at least see women leading the more important plot, and Leia up to something other than bantering with Solo – with perhaps some actual development about how ruthless she’s willing to be to win the war. At least, until a forced “don’t tell us girls what to do” moment basically ruins it.

Luke and Han are barely given anything to do, even though they get the cover (and it’s once again a terrible, awkward looking one for Luke). This boring and truly awful B plot leans solely on Leia’s nerf herder line from Episode V. It is positively cringe worthy and doesn’t make the original line any funnier. This doesn’t bode well for the rest of the series.

So the book is, ironically, strongest when focused on original characters, rather than just the trinity of Luke, Leia and Han. The artist changes every few issues have a clear effect on the quality, especially because if the photo realistic style.

Finally, I mentioned the Obi-Wan one shot and he gets another one here. It’s also terribly boring, about helping Luke out on Tattooine as a child. Even though the art is stunning, Obi-Wan isn’t really given much to do (though we do get a rare sighting of Uncle Owen) and it doesn’t seem like these one shots are building to anything important that might tie into the main story. There’s a lot of room for interesting storytelling, and it would have been nice to give  Obi’s new TV series some good material to work from – no such thing here.

Worth volume four? Not sure. I can’t tell you exactly what I’m looking for from these comics – it’s impossible to recapture the original films’ magic, no matter what medium new stories are being told on – but I also think the stories could be stronger. I think there is room for character development and Aaron isn’t taking it quite far enough. There are enough other books on my list, but if I get lazy, Star Wars is right there on Comixology Unlimited waiting for me. Sigh.