This is another book I picked up from @blewitt a while back. Check him out if you haven't already.

I came into this with no previous knowledge of the series, but being a huge fan of the Original Trilogy. It turned out to be kind of a weird headspace to be in while reading this book. I found myself questioning some of the dialogue and character choices for not fully gelling with the movies. But on the flip side, if I hadn't seen the movies, I feel like I wouldn't have really understood what was going on. So I'm not really sure who the target audience for this is supposed to be.

Let's take a look at some of the finer points. Not sure I really have to put a spoiler alert on a review of a book that's 4 years old based on a movie that's 42 years old, but spoiler spoiler spoiler, I'm going to talk about things that are in the comic and in the movie.

It starts out really nicely.

Double page full spread. That's the good stuff, just like in the movies. Then the vertical crawl goes on to tell us that the rebels had just blown up the Death Star, and the Empire was kind of pissed about it. But they didn't tell me which Death Star just got blowed up. Was it Death Star 1: First Blood, or Death Star 2: Electric Boogaloo? It wasn't until I read a couple more pages that I figured out that this must be happening between New Hope and Empire Strikes back.

This seemed like an odd choice. Surely you're going to introduce continuity errors along the way. Unless this is some sort of alternate universe in some other Galaxy even far, farther away? If the subsequent Star Wars movies taught us anything, it's that Star Wars fans are rabid. We're a bunch of turbonerds with very specific ideas about how characters we know and love should act, and a very good memory for details contained in the original movie canon. So why Marvel would want to risk upsetting the current balance in the force is beyond me.

So right away, I have a bad feeling about this. But I read on.

My fears were founded. There's a Luke who's cracking jokes, Ben's voice shows up at a weird time, and there's awkward retconned foreshadowing about the future relationship between Han and Leia. There's a lot to pick apart when you're coming in with as much of a chip on your shoulder as I have.

It's not all bad though. Once I was able to get over myself and realize this is just a story and doesn't have to be part of the official universe in my head, it's a decent comic. There's this scene, where Luke frees a bunch of prisoners and in the process cuts off a guy's hand (oh, the irony!).

And the ending page did make me want to see what's next in this story. This is one thing I'm not going to spoil, because it was a big shock. I'm honestly interested in where they take this story. I might have to see if the library has the TPB.

All in all, if you can leave your bags with the doorman, this can be an enjoyable read. But don't expect it to be an integrated part of the universe of the Original Trilogy. There's just too many intricacies for anything to fill in that three year gap between Episode 4 and 5. I'm frankly shocked that they tried, and I can only imagine that this was a money grab.

So if you go into it expecting this you'll be like