I feel like I’m somehow turning into the Star Wars guy here. I don’t entirely understand how that’s happening, since I’m not exactly a big Star Wars fan in the first place, but something keeps drawing me back, and it’s not exactly a mystery what brings me back: I love the world of Star Wars, but not a huge fan of the Skywalkers et al. Star Wars Legacy #1 (written by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman, illustrated by Gabriel Hardman) is exactly what keeps bringing me back: a new adventure without any of the familiar characters, just the world. (Note: No, this is not new, but it’s being released for people who haven’t read the series before, like me, so I’ll treat it like a new #1 for a series.)
One important thing is to pay attention to the splash page at the beginning of the comic, which outlines the world that we’re in here. This is 138 years after A New Hope (an oddly specific number), so we’re off in the far future from the time we’re familiar with. I made the mistake of not reading it first time through and was overly confused when I read it then, which was fixed just by reading that first page. Lesson learned: it’s there for a reason.
For as much as it throws us into the far future, there is the smallest bit of connection to the originals: our protagonist is Ania Solo, obviously a relatively distant descendent of Han and Leia, but I’m fine with that small connection, which gives us something somewhat familiar to hang onto. It’s also a bit of a shortcut to getting us to care about the protagonist – we all like Han and Leia, so we’re more likely to care more about the protagonist because she has a connection to them. I’d be tempted to call it cheap, but it just works.
Despite Ania being the protagonist, a lot of the story isn’t just about her. This spends a good amount of time dealing with the fallout from destroying the Empire, even though it happened more than a century before. For this, the story follows Yalta Val, a knight who is trying to deal with that situation on the planet where Ania lives. This is not as interesting as her story, and it feels like a lot of Star Wars EU material is dedicated to deconstructing the simplistic way that politics were presented in the original trilogy, and so this kind of feels unnecessary, but it doesn’t completely detract from Ania’s story.
When I started reviewing The Star Wars, the art in that series bugged me for a little while, though I eventually got used to its style. I bring that up to contrast to this comic, which is much closer to a “standard” comic style, if there can even be said to be a standard style, but it just works. It allows me to immediately get into the world, and not attempting to strongly resemble actors or actual people allows me to immediately connect to these characters as new people in this universe.
Whenever I watch a TV pilot, a #1 in a comic series, or any introduction to anything serial, I recognize that it’ll be rough around the edges and have a few problems. So, I always give it a test: all problems aside, does this make me want to read the next issue? For this comic, the answer is yes, and so I’ll recommend it. Especially since it’s being reissued for $1, you really don’t have a good reason not to at least give this a chance, and now that I’ve finished this, I’m going to track down some of the next issues in the series.
Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) thinks he knows how deep the rabbit hole of Star Wars EU goes, but is probably wrong. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings or check out his personal blog.
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