Star Wars Rediscovered: Classic Star Wars Volume 2 Review

“This is my personal battle cruiser...and I did not name it The Executor for nothing!"

Welcome to Star Wars Rediscovered column. In this review I am examining Classic Star Wars Volume 2: The Rebel Storm. This volume immediately follows on from Volume 1 which I have previously reviewed. The link to this review is here should you wish to see my thoughts on it http://www.theweeklycrisis.com/2013/04/star-wars-rediscovered-classic-star.html This volume collects issues #8-14 of the series.

Find out after the jump what I thought about the second volume in this series.

Classic Star Wars Volume 2: The Rebel Storm

Writer Archie Goodwin

Artist Al Williamson

Art Assist Allen Nunis #10-14, Monty Sheldon #12

Colourists Steve Buccellato # 8-11, 13, 14, Ray Murtaugh # 12

Cover Art

Cover art to collection is nothing special really, we have some sort of sea monster attacking the Millennium Falcon with our heroes looking on. The colours are fairly bland and muted and the character work is appalling. I assume that the blonde haired character is Luke Skywalker but by his face and build could easily be Han Solo, the only reason I assume that this is not Solo with the wrong coloured hair is due to the fact that we have Solo looking character to the left of Luke. Princess Leia doesn't look much better either. Considering that this is the cover to the entire collection it's not a great start.

Plot

Story #8

We resume where volume 1 left off with Han being forced into a hunting party by his old associate Silver Fyre. The crux of this story deals with the betrayal of Silver Fyre's second in command Krakken who tries to get them all killed by the demon squid and then returning to base and attempting to get the secret data off Artoo. This is thwarted by Solo and Leia who entrap Krakken by planting false data and capture him. This plot is very average, none of the characters really make me care about them within this story. They all return to the main rebel base on Yavin which is being attacked by the Empire, the Falcon defeats them but one of the enemy ships crashes in a secluded area which awakens a reptile type monster. This monster finds and attacks Chewie who has felt unease and has gone to investigate.

Story #9

This plot deals with the lizard monster that defeats Chewie and tries to attack Han and Luke. It then attacks the main base and promptly disappears back to its lair. Luke and Artoo track it down and are saved by its attack from Han, Chewie and Leia. The battle between the monster and Chewie was over far too quickly for my liking. I was actually looking forward to this fight when it resumed and was hoping that we would get to see an epic fight between these two beasts, unfortunately not. Instead all we get is the monster throwing Chewie and then that's it.

The monster shields itself in the Force when threatened which apparently makes it pretty much invulnerable. It may be invulnerable to conventional weaponry but surely a lightsaber would be able to harm it? A lightsaber attack is never attempted instead Luke reaches out to the creature with the Force which demonstrates to it that they are not an enemy. This brief connection shows Luke that it is lonely and so he tells it to leave on a ship and find its masters, the story ends with it leaving. I quite liked the hopeful ending to this story, it was different from the run of the mill monster is bad and so kill it approach.

Story #10

A new story starts here with Luke talking to Leia about Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi. There is some good characterisation of Luke, he misses Ben and doesn't know what he's doing. He says how feels Ben is still with them and that he just needs a way to find him. A few pages later and we have a hooded figure who is trying to stop some Stormtroopers slaughtering a rebel weapons dealer, it is implied this could be Ben. The figure attacks them with a lightsaber and actually calls himself Ben Kenobi. Luke hears from the weapons dealer that survived that the man called himself Ben Kenobi and so he travels to the planet to see if it is true. He finds Ben there and is so happy that he hangs on his every word and does anything he says. Therefore they start their journey to the iron tower which Ben says they need to destroy. However this man is not Ben at all but is in fact a traitor and has been surgically altered by the Empire to look like Ben. I am pleased that this did not turn out to be Ben as I feel it would have cheapened his death.

Story #11

They arrive at the tower and “Ben” gets them to split up so that he can meet with Darth Vader who has just arrived. However the imposter defies Vader and tells him that he wants to be Ben as it was the best part he has ever played. Vader attacks him and then goes searching for Luke but the actor manages to press a button on a control panel and blows the tower up. This stops Vader finding Luke and we are given a scene where “Ben” confesses to Luke that it was a lie and then promptly dies. We are shown a panel of Darth Vader who has survived the explosion

The story now shifts to the Rebel base and them discussing how powerful Vader's new cruiser ship is and whether a fabled power gem could disrupt its shields so that they could destroy it.

Han is given the task of locating a power gem through his shady contacts and this takes him to a planet where Han and Chewie will have to fight in an arena and beat all competition to win it

Han persuades the arena owner for Chewie to fight in his place.

Story #12

Han gets Chewie to fight the best arena fighter in the street to cause a distraction so he can go after the power gem. He defeats the former spice pirate and now arena owner’s droid and then when the arena owner arrives tells him that he knows the gem is losing power and only has one charge left in it. He tries to convince him to give it to him as the others would be angered by this fact. Chewie defeats the former best arena fighter and as there are none who would challenge him so he gets the power gem.

The story now switches to Luke and Threepio who are having trouble returning from their previous

mission due to the Empire tightening up on their blockade. They hitch a ride in the slipstream of a comet to escape some enemy ships but are trapped in it and crash land on an ice world. The planet turns out to be Hoth. A figure is shown to be watching the crashed ship who turns out to be a woman who rescues a now unconscious Luke from the cold and takes him and Threepio to her angry father.

Story #13

A recovered Luke defends himself against her father with his lightsaber and gets Threepio to lock him up while he and the girl go back to his ship to salvage the parts from the communicator in the hopes of having enough parts to get the communicator at her base working again. However her father the governor breaks free and tracks them down, he tries to shoot the Tauntaun carrying the communicator parts but accidently shoots his daughter! He tries to attack Luke again but Luke strikes him with his lightsaber accidently when trying to disarm him.

Random twist, both the governor and his daughter are droids! created by Imperial technicians to be decoys of the real governor and daughter so that they could escape a rebel attack. However the governor droid's instincts were too strong and so he escaped the attack along with droid daughter. Both droids pass away. I didn’t really see the point of them being droids, other than potentially softening the girls death in Luke’s arms.

The plot now changes to the starship yards of Fondor where Darth Vader's new ship is now completed and he wants to christen it up blowing up the nearest Rebel outpost. We are told that Luke and Threepio have escaped Hoth and Leia suggests it may be a good place for the Rebel's to base themselves. Vader's ship now called 'The Executor' destroys Laakteen Depot. The rebel leaders decide to move the base to Hoth but need a diversion in the form of the Mon Calamari and their leader Admiral Ackbar who have just joined the Rebels. Unfortunately when the rebels arrive at the place to meet Ackbar his destroyed ship is all that greets them. Artoo discovers that escape pods were jettisoned moments before the ship exploded and that they landed on a planet called Daluuj. They track the pods and find Ackbar alive but the Imperials are tracking the pod too. The Falcon lands on a lake but is attacked by a gigantic sea monster, everyone escapes but the Falcon is dragged under. Han then tries to dive down and rescue it but the great pressures are too much for him.

Story #14

Han, Luke and Chewie defeat the soldiers that were tracking the pod but are surprised by a group of soldiers that sneaked up on foot. They take cover in an empty ground-skimmer which unfortunately Han had rigged to explode. They manage to escape from it before it explodes and use the explosion as cover to escape from the Imperials. The Imperials are defeated by the sea monster thanks to

Ackbar positioning themselves so that the Imperials had to cross the lake to get to them. The Falcon is released thanks to this. The story switches to a Rebel ship attacking Vader's new star destroyer, the Rebel's are easily dispatched. Our heroes arrive back at the Rebel base and all immediately start planning how to stop Vader who is on his way to destroy them all. We are reminded that they still have the power gem but it only has one charge left. The Rebel base leader's son Vrad Dodonna returns suspiciously as he returns with a battle damaged ship even though Luke saw him not long before with no damage. Vrad then volunteers himself to be the pilot who attacks Vader's ship with the power gem but Luke not trusting him manages to get himself on as backup pilot. Vrad confronts Luke and Luke tells him his suspicions  they go to the woods and fight, Vrad wins and while Luke is on the floor Vrad picks up a big tree branch implying that he is going to kill him. I’m quite surprised that Luke agreed to fight Vrad, as it seems a bit schoolboy to me and actually if he had just not been so honest to Vrad about his suspicions then he could have still stopped him if Vrad had tried to betray them.

The story in this volume ends abruptly just like the first volume, we are left with Vader aware that even though the Rebels have stopped attacking at the time that they will leave their most desperate and cunning attack for last.


Interior Art

The quality of the artwork within this volume is more or less the same as Volume 1, however I did find more to like here than I was expecting. Some of the panels that I liked the most include a really good image of the red demon squid looming in the background and ready to attack them (this reviews banner image), in a  panel displaying the iron tower where the fake Ben is taking Luke to Darth Vader, the use of colour is brilliant, the black sky looks really moody and is offset well by the yellow streaming light. On Hoth there is a good panel of a mysterious figure watching Luke’s crashed ship on a Tauntaun with the storm swirling around them, a great use of shadow. The image of the Vader’s Executor flying past the now destroyed depot is fantastic with a good use of colours and motion.Finally there is a great panel of the Falcon rising from the depths of the lake, the contrast between the white of the water spray to the blackness of the clouds and sky is brilliant.

Conclusion & Rating

To conclude I found this volume to be only slightly less disappointing than the first volume. I enjoyed the stories a bit more and although they were few and far between there were some panels that worked really well. Generally though like the first this volume is hampered by the fact that it was originally created for a newspaper strip and so the art suffers from being lackluster and the plot suffers from not having much depth generally and repeating itself too much.

Rating: 5/10 - Bounty Hunters

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