Star Wars vol. 9: Hope Dies

While I enjoyed Jason Aaron’s run on this title well enough, it was missing the sense of purpose that Kieron Gillen has brought to his.  Aaron told several mostly entertaining stories that stood on their own with little interconnectedness. Gillen’s previous two volumes told their own stories as well, but also communicated a larger picture of a Rebellion that was ascendant and preparing to go toe-to-toe with the Empire.  That storyline reaches its arguable climax with this volume, whose title is essentially a spoiler for the fact that things definitely do not go according to plan.  Then again, the existence of “The Empire Strikes Back” is also a spoiler for that as well as something that kind of undercuts what Gillen is attempting to do here.

Thanks to the materials supplied by Queen Trios of Shu-Torun and the ships from their new Mon Calamari allies, the Rebellion finally has its own fleet.  Where their attacks against the Empire had been limited to guerilla attacks and surgical strikes, the Rebels will now be able to go toe-to-toe against their oppressors.  Such success begets a rare moment of celebration, which is what Leia, Trios, and Mon Mothma are doing among dignitaries as the story opens at Mako-Ta base as it circles a nearby sun.  Keeping the Empire from knowing about the fleet is of paramount importance, so preparations are underway to disperse it until the time is right.

Faster than you can say “It’s a trap!” the Empire makes its presence known in a big way.  By that I mean Vader shows up with the Executor and two Star Destroyer escorts. Though it looks like the new fleet is about to be put to its first test, all of the ships’ onboard systems are revealed to have been locked down.  The rebels have been betrayed and now their fleet is going to be destroyed one ship at a time by a Dark Lord of the Sith who has come to savor their fear. That is, unless a certain scruffy smuggler, his wookie pal, and their fussy protocol droid can come up with some last-ditch plan to save everyone.

With a title like “Hope Dies” and the setup I’ve just described, you could be forgiven for thinking that this storyline is going to be one big bummer.  While much of it is about the Rebels watching their best-laid plans go up in smoke, the real thrust of the story is watching them try to claw back the advantage one small victory at a time. Whether it’s seeing Leia lead the charge onto the traitor’s ship, watching Han try to outfly a vindictive Vader, or seeing Luke trust in the Force in order to open docking bay doors, there’s a positive thrust to the narrative throughout.  This may be one of the Rebellion’s darkest days, but that doesn’t stop them from fighting back or displaying resourcefulness in the face of overwhelming odds.

Gillen and artist Salvador Larroca also do their best to make the proceedings as exciting as possible.  The pace is kept relentless throughout the story, letting the reader take in each major set piece in as seamless a manner as possible.  There are some great ones too, like the aforementioned dogfight between Han and Vader as the latter is clearly looking for payback after the events of “A New Hope” and the former has to reach deep into his bag of tricks to get out of it.  We also get a impressively tense infiltration of the Executor as Leia and a team of Rebel special forces try to find the key to ending the lockdown, only to find themselves pursued by Vader again.

If it sounds like Darth Vader is a major player in this story, that’s because he’s arguably a more dominant presence in it than the main cast.  Gillen and Larroca showed how well the could capture the Dark Lord’s menace and drive in their “Darth Vader” series and “Hope Dies” essentially shows us what happens to Luke, Han, Leia, and company when they run up against it.  It’s a delicate balancing act to keep Vader as a significant threat even though we know that his plans can’t fully succeed in the end. I’d say it’s an impressive achievement to see the creators thread that needle, but it’s something they did on a regular basis in that series.  More impressive (and refreshing) is that the pseudo-photo-realism that has plagued Larroca’s art in the past few volumes has been properly exorcised.  Save for a few awkward-looking faces here and there, his art looks as good as it did before his characters started looking too real.

And yet…

While there’s so much to like about this story, it can’t quite escape the nagging feeling that Gillen is tacking on some unnecessary scaffolding to the “Star Wars” mythos.  One of the reasons that his “Darth Vader” series worked so well is that “How did he redeem himself after the destruction of the Death Star?” was a legitimate question that needed to be answered.  With “Hope Dies” the writer is looking to answer the question of “How did the Rebels wind up forced to set up camp on Hoth?”

The problem is that question was answered by the opening title crawl of “Empire” which told us that Imperial forces hounded the Rebellion until they were forced to that out-of-the-way planet.  I’m not saying that the story Gillen is telling here doesn’t make sense, because it does. It’s just that I’m not sure what learning about the Rebellion’s doomed fleet really adds to the “Star Wars” mythos beyond what was said in the films.

That being said, if there’s any real issue I have with the storytelling in “Hope Dies” it’s the fact that it’s hard to empathize with the destruction going on beyond the loss of the Rebel fleet.  Lots of ships blow up over the course of this story, but fortunately for us no one we really know or care about is on them until the end. Leia expresses plenty of empathy for the destruction, and tries to sell the tragedy as best she can by noting at one point that so many ships have blown up that she can’t tell who they’ve lost anymore.  I get that this is important to the characters and the narrative, yet it still feels like empty spectacle.

There is some long-term plotting which became evident here that I did appreciate here and am looking to see how it plays out through the end of Gillen’s run.  That would be the fate of Trios and Shu-Torun. While the writer’s runs on “Darth Vader” and “Star Wars” told their own individual stories, it’s starting to appear that if you consider them together they become the story of the ascendant queen and the terrible things she did to secure her planet’s future.  That the final arc of Gillen’s run is called “The Scourging of Shu-Torun” does not bode well for her or the moral high ground enjoyed by the Rebellion.

I’m not saying this salvages the storyline of this volume, because it didn’t need to be in the first place.  While I question the necessity of “Hope Dies” to the overall “Star Wars” mythos, there’s still no denying that Gillen and Larroca put on a hell of a show throughout.  Everything they do comes together to make “Hope Dies” as entertaining as its title is depressing.