Star Wars vol. 8: Mutiny at Mon Cala

After the previous volume my biggest concern with this one was “How is the art going to turn out?”  To my surprise, things are actually better this time around. It appears that artist Salvador Larroca and colorist GURU-eFX have decided to double-down on making the human characters (and those humans who were also in the movies) look as realistic as their techniques will allow.  While some faces still come off looking like they’ve been pasted onto the art, their efforts actually mesh better with the overall art here more often than not. I still wish that they’d just ditch this approach entirely as Larroca shows here that he can deliver perfectly appropriate alien faces without the “enhancements” that have been applied to the human ones.  His design sense and action work are also still on form here as the scenes of the water ballet performance on Mon Cala look great and the big spaceship battle that closes out the volume is impressively epic.

Even better news is that while there were some rocky bits in the storytelling in “The Ashes of Jedha,” “Mutiny at Mon Cala” shows writer Kieron Gillen perfectly on form here.  The storyline concerns the efforts of the Rebellion to recruit the Mon Calamari to their cause, and while we all know how that’s going to turn out the actual mechanics of it are pretty entertaining to observe.  They involve (in no particular order) the kidnapping and impersonation of Mon Cala’s Imperial Moff, an undersea jailbreak to rescue royalty, the unexpected return of Leia’s guardian Bail Organa, C-3P0’s performing arts debut, and Queen Trios of Shu-Torun proving her loyalty to the Rebellion.  It’s a great heist story that also manages to effortlessly work in the kind of witty asides that Gillen loves to pepper his work with. “Mutiny at Mon Cala” was basically everything that I was expecting from his and Larroca’s run on this title when it was announced and it builds things up in just the right way for hope to die in the next volume.