Star Wars vol. 2: Showdown on the Smuggler’s Moon
As I said in the podcast, it was really hard not to enjoy the first volume of “Star Wars” from writer Jason Aaron, with art for those issues provided by John Cassaday. The problem was that after throwing in the big guns — A showdown with Darth Vader! Boba Fett vs. Luke Skywalker on Tatooine! — it was kind of hard to see what could be done to top these things. Much to my surprise, Aaron has found a way to deliver another satisfying volume by emphasizing different character dynamics rather than pure spectacle. After he gets over the Obi-Wan Kenobi-shaped speed bump at the start.
In what looks to be a regular between-arcs feature, the first story here is from the Journals of Old Ben Kenobi that Luke found on Tatooine. We get a glimpse of what the Jedi Master-turned-hermit’s life was like on the desert planet as he kept an eye on Luke from a distance and tried his best to fade into the background. This proves to be particularly difficult during a drought one year when Jabba the Hutt’s thugs go around squeezing the populace for all the water they’re worth.
That Kenobi finds it difficult to let these thugs have their way should surprise no one. While the first part of the story is interesting enough, showcasing the by-the-book Jedi Master’s difficulty in acclimating to a situation no one could train him for, it ultimately goes nowhere. Some thugs are beaten up, Luke is saved, and it looks like Kenobi is going to become some nameless desert vigilante. As this is only the first of these stories, one would think that Aaron has a long-term plan for them. Right now, it doesn’t appear to be adding up to much — even with the nice art from Simone Bianchi.
Things pick up considerably when the main story kicks off as Han and Leia are still being held at gunpoint by the former’s wife Sana. If that wasn’t a tricky enough situation, there’s still a Star Destroyer looking to take out a couple of the Rebellion’s key players. Meanwhile, motivated by the discovery of Kenobi’s journal, Luke decides that he needs to know more about being a Jedi. This leads him to Nar Shadda, the Smuggler’s Moon, in the hopes of finding a pilot crazy enough to take him to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. This plays out about as well as you’d expect for the young Jedi and he soon finds himself a prisoner of Grakkus the Hutt. A collector of Jedi artifacts, the hutt has some very specific plans in mind for the Last Jedi.
If “Skywalker Strikes” was all about serving up a classic “Star Wars” adventure with the core cast of the films, “Showdown on the Smuggler’s Moon” shows us how these people handle themselves when they’re away from each other and thrust into unfamiliar situations. You can see the strengths and weaknesses of this approach in the thread that follows Leia, Han, and Sana. The revelation about Han’s marital status sidelines his previous attempt to romance the princess and results in a lot of prickly banter that feels perfectly in line with their relationship in the movies. Sana also has fun in prodding her husband and at first comes off like a smart, strong-willed addition to the cast. However, once the truth about her “marriage” comes out it actually makes her seem more pathetic than anything else. The revelation doesn’t ruin her character, but Aaron has some work rebuilding it ahead of himself here.
Luke, on the other hand, gets a more adventurous role this time out with his escapades in Nar Shadda. While his plan may be poorly thought out, we get to see that he’s capable of handling himself when things go bad. Even when they involve something known as Kongo the Disembowler.
That said, the best pairing in this volume comes with the Chewbacca/C-3P0 team-up that I didn’t know I wanted. Though they’ve been teamed up together in the past, that was usually because the latter had been disassembled and needed the former to carry him around. This time the wookie and protocol droid are working as actual partners when they head to Nar Shadda to rescue Luke. You wouldn’t think that the droid’s fussy formality would mix well with the wookie’s brute force, but they actually make for a rather effective and entertaining team. More of this in future volumes, please.
What we won’t be seeing in future volumes is more from the artist of the main story here, Stuart Immonen. Longtime readers should know that I think he’s one of the best comic book artists around. He reinforces my here with some truly stellar work that captures the likenesses of the characters and the “Star Wars” look in effortless fashion. Yes, Cassaday is peerless at conveying appealing photo-realism, but Immonen’s slightly cartoonish style never fails to captivate and nails the high-energy feel of the story that Aaron is telling here. Without Immonen’s art, I sincerely doubt that I’d have enjoyed the main story as much as I did here.
It’s worth noting that there is one special guest from the “Star Wars” films in this volume. Before you get your hopes up, you should probably know that it’s Dengar, one of the bounty hunters seen in “The Empire Strikes Back,” and has also popped up in the Expanded Universe a few times prior to its rebooting. I bring this up because after the big-name guests from the last arc, “Showdown on the Smuggler’s Moon” shows that Aaron doesn’t need to wheel out the big guns to tell a good “Star Wars” story.