Star Wars: Han Solo — Imperial Cadet

I know what you’re all thinking:  Between this and “Lando:  Double or Nothing” which is the better comic inspired by “Solo:  A Star Wars Story?” Wait. You weren’t asking that?  None of you were asking that!? Well, I guess it’s not hard to guess why, especially after this miniseries doesn’t really tell us anything that we couldn’t have guessed for ourselves.  After the first issue opens by lightly cribbing from the movie, it quickly gets to the “Imperial Cadet” part of the title and we get to see just what it was like for a young Han Solo in the Imperial Academy.

Scratch that.  You can probably guess exactly what it was like.  Han is your typical rule-breaking wiseass who gets in ALL the trouble.  It’s a familiar story and while Leonard Kirk tries his best to jazz things up with his energetic art, writer Robbie Thompson seems content to play by the rules.  Except in the third issue where Han sneaks his fellow cadets onto a casino space station and things get enjoyably chaotic for a while. Then it’s back to the familiar drudgery of the main plot as we’re meant to find the question of whether our protagonist will embrace the rules of the Empire or his own personal desires genuinely suspenseful.  If you think there’s an actual question there, then you’ll probably enjoy this miniseries more than I did.

This volume also contains the “Beckett” one-shot spotlighting Han’s morally ambiguous mentor from the movie.  It’s written by Gerry Duggan with art from Edgar Salazar, Marc Laming, and Will Sliney. I’d tell you more about it, but if you weren’t interested in a miniseries about Han Solo as an Imperial Cadet I sure as hell don’t know how a “Beckett” comic is going to change your mind.