I was frustratingly vague in my review of issue #1 of this series. A lot of that was due to the fear that Dark Horse would send someone with a lightsaber to my apartment if I spoiled anything, but also because the idea alone carried the issue and my recommendation. However, now that the novelty has worn off, does The Star Wars #2 (written by JW Rinzler, illustrated by Mike Mayhew) carry itself with the story rather than just the concept?
![](https://redshirtcrew.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2d18c-thestarwars2.jpg?w=208&h=320) |
I just had to post the Ralph McQuarrie cover. |
I don’t hold Star Wars up as the foundation of my childhood or The Holy Trilogy (that belongs to Lord of the Rings), so I really wanted to see the different interpretations of these characters. While I still like it, this series is caught in a weird Catch-22 – it wouldn’t exist without the Star Wars name and is too much of a rip-off to exist on its own. Problem is, existing in the middle tends to just make things more confusing. The biggest issue is how much the characters are modeled after the actors – this Princess Leia looks like Carrie Fisher while acting nothing like her Leia, this Annikin looks like an older Hayden Christensen but is nothing like him. Just a change in the art, designing those characters to look different than their (somewhat) counterparts from the movies would go a long way towards avoiding confusion.
Big Star Wars fans are about to be pissed off at really stupid things, which I realize now should be the definition of fans. There are some familiar characters introduced here with a very different take than people are used to. Now, that can be said for everyone, but these are particularly beloved characters, and anything that’s changed about them is going to bring the angry fans out in droves, assuming that they’re reading this in the first place. While it caught me off-guard, I believe that changes shouldn’t be condemned automatically, and since the spirit of the characters is still intact, I’m willing to roll with it and actually enjoy seeing a different take.
The story in this issue is also a little unclear. The biggest problem is that it’s trying to hit on a lot of beats from the original movie (as much as I’d like to avoid the comparisons, they’re simply impossible not to make), but they play out in a different but unforunately unclear way. I’m also wondering how much ground of the original trilogy is going to be covered in this series, in their very compressed way. I thought this was just going to cover the ground of Star Wars, but this issue is making me think it’s going to cover a lot more.
Overall, I give this a tentative recommendation, only $3.99 after all. I have enough faith in it for now that my subscription is still going, but the novelty is wearing off and the rest of the story hasn’t yet stepped up to compensate. If you’re not in on it yet, this won’t convince you, but if you’re already reading it, you’ll want to keep going.
Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) tried writing this review purely in beeps and whistles, but the speech recognition software didn’t like that idea. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.